Grey heron (Ardea cinerea)

[Juan Aragonés]

Oh my god, each time I visit BPN I am more and mor amazed by the huge amount of quality images that everybody is posting. Too much excellent images and too little time to comment on them:(. Amazing site!!!
Here is a heron from my last outing in Doñana National Park (Huelva, Southwestern Spain). This one is a big crop (about 2300x1500 px) but I likeed the green BG, the soft light and the pose of the bird. I was trying to get a decent flight of a purple heron when this guy gave to me a nice oportunity to have a decent flight of a grey! Not a bad thing, of course and here is the result. Here I added some gaussian blur to the BG to increase the OOF sensation. As always I would love to hear you comments and critics. :)

BTW my main monitor is out of work and while I wait for the repair I am processing on a "paleomonitor" from the Quaternary age :D so I apologize for colour casts and the like. Please, let me know if you see anything of that ;)

Nikon D2X AFS Nikkor 300VR + 1,4XTC, strongly croped (but a decent file size of about 4 Mp) manual exposure ( I am going totally manual), handhel f5 1/800

[Brutus Ostling]

Very nIce flight shot. Cropping is totally OK. Did you make it from the car window? When I was down in Donana a couple of years ago, the only way to get flight shots like this was from the car using it as a hide. The birds seemed to be very shy and afraid. So I know how difficut they can be - I was just driving around and around looking for something.
I have noticed a tendency when I am shooting digital that a flying bird can become too sharp, unrealisticly sharp. This one has that tendency too, it maybe looks a little bit too sharp. That's my only comment on what could be better.

When I made a book about Eagles last year I had to use the blur tool to blur the otherwise too sharp line between the wing and the sky in some photos - not to having the bird popping out totally and unrealistically from the background. This is a phenomena I think is new when we went to digital, but still: it is odd when you have to blur instead of sharpening your images.

[Juan Aragonés]

Brutus you are totally right, this one (like my previous purple heron) was photographed handheld from the car. the birds are really shy in the south of Spain but this is a rare spring in that matter. I made this image two weekends ago and the birds were really cooperative, sqcuacco, purple and grey herons just a few meters from the car. This fact is due to the recent rainfalls, a very rare event here, and the birds are crazy with the water and the breeding season. Great day. Please have a look a the european forum, I posted there an image of an squacco heron from the same day (http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=11382) almost full frame and withim a few meters from the car.
This image is probably oversharpened but without forcing the file, because the original is sharp, is just a matter of taste and I really like sharp images.;)

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great details, light and BG. I only wish for a bit more of a banking pose.

[Kobus Tollig]

Great shot well done on this one. Great comp with great BG well done

[Freddy Franzella]

Everything just comes together in this image! the bird with great detail really pops against that background!

[Juan Aragonés]

Hi Juan,
It would be interesting to see the original as well (with the same crop). I wonder if you blurred the BG wit the dual duplicate layer technique ? I tried it a few times now as well (on your directions in 'Cool Pose' :D ) and noticed that the area intersecting the bird and the BG gets additional (unintentional) sharpening.
Otherwise a cool picture !!

Hi Peter, yes, the same method here. I would try to post more on the matter this weekend and will try to help you with the processing.

The gaussian blur effect applied here is very slight, the BG was OOF in the original file, so gaussian blur effects should have no negative effects on the image if you keep the selection active and delete de bird in the duplicate layer.

Juan