I keep running into a group of five juvi Yellow-Crowns at a pond where I'm trying to get some good shots (heck, I'd settle for one good shot) of some Black Skimmers who feed there. This one has become more curious than afraid and will approach pretty close. Processing was pretty minimal, your basic n/r and curves adjustment. C & C always welcome.
Taken July 11, 2013, 6.57am
Canon 7D
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L lens
1/320 second, f/6.3, ISO 1600
The green background and alert pose from the heron are great. Good exposure. The bird is lacking some fine detail, you might try another sharpening pass for the jpeg.
Love your composition here and the way the bird comes out of the bottom left hand corner of the frame. It looks great against the green BG. Did you do NR on the bird also? I wish for more feather details in your bird.
Thanx for the comments. I did sharpen it, but maybe I'll reprocess it. I had to be fairly heavy with the n/r due to the high ISO. I could trade a little noise for sharpness, or separate the bird from the background so I'm not sharpening the background noise.
So, I started over from scratch on this shot. I cropped wider, just cutting the top/bottom to get an 11x14 ratio, separated the bird from the background to process each individually, and spent more time selectively sharpening it. In the end, I may just stick with the original. I don't like the new crop as much, and it didn't do a whole lot for the detail. Here it is along with a 100% view so you can see what I had to work with.
Again, thanx to everybody for the comments. Most other forums I post to either get no comments or just "great shot." I really appreciate the constructive advice; I'm looking at my shots with a more critical eye, not just in post, but when I'm out in the field getting the shots. I just wish I had more work that was worthy of posting here... everybody else sets the bar pretty high.
Another Juvi Yellow-Crowned Night Heron
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