Greenie

[Ian Cassell]

Canon 7D
Canon 500/4 + 1.4x
1/125 sec f/5.6 ISO 400 Gimbal/Tripod

Color Efex Pro
CS6 - crop for comp and sharpening

[Bill Jobes]

Very nice look at the Greenie, Ian.. I love its wretched, wrangled perch. There is that slight hot spot at far mid left on the log, that could be tamed a bit if you were so inclined.

Now if this were my image, I'd experiment with a gaussian blur on the BG to mute the distractions. But that's purely a personal choice. And I may not like it after I did it.

The light is very interesting. It appears to be late afternoon or early morning. So the golden wash tends, to my eye at least, to mute the feather colors a bit. Perhaps a touch of a Vibrance tool on them would add some punch. And maybe a hint of more sharpening.

These are all simply my take on what I'm seeing.

In the end, I like your take as well.

[Ian Cassell]

Thanks, Bill. I hadn't noticed the hot spot until you pointed it out. I need to follow Jeff's rule of scanning all corners of the image before I post it. This was very early morning light (6am - about 20 minutes after sunrise). I'll give it a go with vibrance and see what happens. As for using the blur on the BG, I never seem to be successful with that. I'll try it though and see. Thanks again for the critique - much appreciated.

[Bill Jobes]

Glad to help out a bit, Ian.

Here's a PS6 trick to implement Gaussian Blur on the background:

Use the Quick Selection tool to outline the bird.

Go to the menu bar and choose Select, then Inverse (This flips CS6 attention to the area not selected by the tool: i.e., the BG)

Then in the menu bar, choose Filter, then Blur, then Gaussian Blur. Move the radius slider to achieve the degree of blur you wish to apply.

Save that and you're done.

[Sandy Witvoet]

Incredible Greenie! Perhaps a bit too much "stuff" on the LRS? Pretty much what Bill said.... love the "eye contact"!

[Andrew Merwin]

I actually like the tangled BG here as it shows the heron in its habitat. I also like the unobstructed view of the heron. They are usually lurking in the reeds when I see them making a good image difficult to obtain and this is a very good image. TFS.