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Tricolored Heron
Here's tricolored heron I photographed while on vacation in Florida a couple of weeks ago. Life's been pretty busy lately and I have a lot of catching up to on BPN, there's a lot of good stuff being posted.
Hand-held, Canon 5D Mii with 70-200mm + 1.4x @ 280mm 1/800, f/4.0. Cropped for comp and cleaned up in LR and PS.
Thoughts? Does the grass in the lower right detract or not?
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Hi Tom, good to see you back. There is a lot to like about this image. The bird appears sharp, it has a nice pose, the colors look well rendered. I like the unusual shoreline, it almost looks like heavily varnished wood morphing to water. To answer your question, I do find the grass to be distracting, not only in shape, but also in color- it doesn't blend well with the other dominant elements. I also find the plant shadows above the heron to be distracting. For this image, I feel a cleaner approach centered on the bird, the reflection and the water would work best, the subject alone just isn't dominant enough in the frame to support competing elements. It really is a nice capture.
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Hi Tom! This is a heron I have yet to photograph, and look forward to such an opportunity. The bird is sharp and I like the reflection. My biggest issue with this image is the bright water in the BG. It keeps drawing my eye away from your main subject. I would be tempted to crop a lot tighter, possibly in portrait. WDYT?
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Very nice, and different! I like the view, and the colors in the water are gorgeous! I'd crop off the top to get rid of the dark areas in the water, and from the right to get rid of the rightmost clump of grasses. Would have been nice to be able to zoom in more but you were at your limit.
270 mm is not enough for most nature subjects. A lot of people are getting the new Tamron 150-600, which sounds very promising. Lets you get environmental shots and the closer portraits, too.
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Beautiful shot. I'm with Ian on this one.
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Very nice shot. The bird is very sharp and I like the ripples in the water. As far as the grass goes IMHO I think it is fine. It adds to the story of the photograph and of gives me the feeling as though I am looking through the grass at this bird in its natural environment. I agree with Diane and the others about maybe cropping a little off the top to eliminate those dark plant reflections. If you had a little more reach that would of been great but you did a great job with the focal length you had.
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Thanks everyone, great suggestions. I'll work on a crop and repost.
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Here is a cropped version (hopefully not too tight) with some toning down on the upper highlights. I ran Dfine on the background and Sharpener Pro on the heron. A little more on this photo, it was taken at a Disney resort from a bridge. If I could have gotten lower to the water I would have but I think the higher angle provided some nice reflections.
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Originally Posted by
Diane Miller
This one feels too crowded on the right -- the bird needs a little room to look into. Here's my suggestion.
I'm behind Diane on this one...
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Tom, your crop seems too tight for me. Dianes suggestion was good and it still included some of the grass that I liked as well.
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I thought my crop was too tight. I'll have to keep working to get over my TCS (Tight Copping Syndrome) 
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