Snowy Egret

[Eric Freeman]

I shot this guy a few days ago. He hangs out at a local fishing pier, begging for handouts, so he's fairly tame. PP was pretty standard: a little noise reduction, sharpening, levels and curves adjusted.

Taken at 7:24am
Canon 7D
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L lens
1/640 second, f/5.6, ISO 400


Snowy Egret by ScubaDude1960, on Flickr

[Jeannean Ryman]

I really like this pose Eric. Great background as well. The image is over-sharpened in places. Did you do selective sharpening or global (lots of sharpening artifacts in the background is why I ask)? Also, there is a definite sharpening halo around the beak (jaggy white line). It seems just a tad underexposed. Maybe a bit more levels/curves adjustment to bring up the shadows. Also a selective shadow adjustment of the eye will help bring that out as well. I did a quick edit in CS5 with some noise reduction, levels adjustment (using white point) cloned out the beak halo, and did a separate shadow adjustment to the eye area using a curves layer. I'm sure your adjustments to the raw file would be much better. (Also resized to the site limit of 800 on the vertical side.) I hope you don't mind, as I tend to like to see suggestions when I post something. Overall, it's a wonderful shot!

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Eric, good points made by Jeannean - especially regarding the dark area of the face. The whites are well under control and the color rendition looks good. I am curious about the crop, is this full frame? You are somewhere between a 3/4 portrait and a full body shot. I'm not crazy about the legs being cut off at the knee, and would love to see all the plumage on the left instead of it being cut off. Basically a fine image, I just would have backed off a bit to get the whole bird in the frame.

Jeannean, the size limitation only applies to images that are hosted on the BPN site. Since Eric's image is hosted on Flickr, there is no size restriction.

[Eric Freeman]

Thanks for the comments, and I don't mind the editing. I just got my 7D last month and the RAW files are much more difficult to work with than the ones my T1i produces. Plus, I really liked this shot and worked on it in PS5 until my eyes were bleeding... sometimes I should take breaks so I can look at it with a fresh perspective. Sharpening was applied selectively, with none applied to the background... just a noisy image. I used minimal n/r to keep from losing feather detail. It was shot exposed to the right, and exposure reduced in post to try to bring out feather detail (in retrospect, a bit too much). Despite the histograms in camera and in ACR and PS5 showing nothing blown out, there doesn't seem to be much/any detail on the top of the head. The shot is uncropped; the egret kept walking towards me, even getting closer than the minimum focus distance of my 400mm. I don't mind the missing feet, but I may extend the image to the left and clone in the missing head feathers. Here it is re-edited. I gave it a little more n/r, a little less sharpening and lightened the area around the eye just a bit.


Snowy Egret, re-edited by ScubaDude1960, on Flickr

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Eric,

Good comments above but the crop does not work for me especially cutting off at the knee joints and the subject is tight in the frame. The story here is the head area and white feather hanging below, would also be a nice portrait either cropped that way or shot that way.

Having 400mm of lens in your hands can be challenging probably not the right lens for this image,..but when this happens go wide open (you were) and get the portrait or switch lens or backup and get a vert with more of the subject in the frame. On balance, I like the image you controlled the whites well very nice exposure and detail - go back and get him again. Thanks for posting and keep em coming!