I captured this image last October at Circle B Bar Reserve. Comments and critique are welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.
Nikon D7000
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED shot at 400mm (600mm FFE)
1/1600 F/5.6 Matrix Metering + 1/3 EV ISO 560
Post processed in Lightroom 5 and Photoshop Elements 10
Cropped for composition, noise reduction to background, Iris Enhance on the eye
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
Joe, I like the framing of this as well as the oof background. Overall, the image seems too bright and I think the colors would look more pleasing and saturated if you lower the brightness.
Thanks Dan and John for viewing, commenting and offering suggestions. Dan, what appears to be a halo at the top of the head was out of focus feathers apparently on the backside. I cloned them out. John, I lowered the brightness a tad, I like it better. Thanks again.
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
I love this species, and you got it on a very nice perch. Strong light...and I feel the image feels a tad bright even on the respost. The darkest blacks are quite dark already so it may be a reduction on the midtones that could further help. Is that part of another heron in the lower left corner?
Hi Joseph, lovely comp and pose, and I like the overall detail. Killer BG. Before reading the other comments, I felt you could go darker on the overall image. Here is my version applying a multiply blending mode on your OP, and desaturated the yellows in the BG.
Thanks everyone for viewing, commenting, and offering suggestions to improve my image. I have taken all your suggestions and worked on the image again implementing them. I thought Stuart's edit really showed how the image could be with the right technique. I used his suggestion of the Multiply blending mode for the image I am posting here. Thanks again for your interest and time, I truly appreciate that.
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams