Green Heron (Butorides virescent) in the Early Morning Light
Greetings,
I overnighted in a sleeping bag on Mecca Beach at the Salton Sea State Recreation Area in order to get to the lagoon behind the visitor center before the sun rose. Sunlight had touched almost all the lagoon except for the perch where this beautiful bird stood waiting. Palm trees blocked the light. Finally. Finally the sunlight hit this bird, though it was still quite dark.
I've obviously pushed sliders to the right to lighten the Green Heron. But I think the soft cinnamon feathers on the belly are worth it. I love this bird. It waited patiently for me. The thing I'm most concerned about, though, is the rufus tint along the top. Is it too much a distraction? If so, what's the best process for minimizing it?
I've posted a different frame of the same bird some time ago. Here goes again!
ORIGINAL
1DX, 500/4, tripod/gimbal
Evaluative metering
1/2000, f/4, ISO auto (640)
Up highlights and shadows, and a tad of exposure. Increased yellow, blue, and aqua saturation. Sharpened in PS.
Hey Jim, you old hippie...sleeping out on the beach. I admire your determination to get this shot. Unusual perch and a beautiful bird well captured. Gorgeous soft BG. This is where I am torn. I love the colour combination so much and the "rufus" tint mimicks the colour of the bird's breast. However, it also draws my eye away from the bird. I know the IQ would suffer if you cropped too much more, but have a look at just taking off the brighter rufus bits and just let the hint of colour float down...but then to balance, you may need to cut off a tad on the RHS. So, I am of no help whatsoever. I can see by your Original, that you have tried to get the crop exactly right with ROT. I think we need to hear from the Grasshopper who is spending way too much time over in Avian.
Hey, guys, I'm spending way too much time playing with shooting birds -- almost no time to post any of them. And lots of room to improve! Off to bed now as I'll be stomping around in the mud tomorrow from early till into the afternoon, light and luck permitting. I'll try to catch up tomorrow but light looks good all week, after much gloom and doom in the skies here, so I'll be scarce. Hold down the fort!
This is a gorgeous pose in great light!! The color at the top is lovely but I would crop a little more of it. Love the orange and blue, though. If you had to lighten it, exposure should have been more to the right. You want to overexpose slightly, and bring it down in post, to minimize noise.
Do you have a 1.4X, or even a 2X -- the extra magnification might be better than cropping, although you should have great IQ with that body and lens. The full-frame body is great but you need to get closer or use a longer focal length to take advantage of it.
Hi Jim, apart from avoiding hefty crops as mentioned above in Diane's reply, if budget allows, I would invest in a 1.4, IQ will be better.
Briefly looking at the image, to me it looks under exposed by perhaps almost a stop, probably between 0.67 - 1. Removing all the blue provides a more 'natural' looking perch, albeit colour can be then tailored to suit. I quite like the red creeping in on the top trim, but might darken the brighter part, just depends on the look & feel you wish to give.
Thank you. I value the feedback from each of you. I reworked the image considerably, dropping the blue saturation, dropping the red saturation and luminance, cropping, and lowering
the piling. I had been considering that all along. As losing the rust color along the top costed me some drama in the image, I went to Color Efex 4 for a vignette. I'm eager to know your responses to the RP. And, Glennie, you and I often have a discussion about vignette. My thinking here is that this is a pretty static image, and as the BG has little variety, it could benefit from the vignette. What do you think?
Steve, I have both 1.4X and 2.0X vIIIs. But I'm just now at the part of the learning curve when I am beginning to concentrate on anything other than getting the subject in the viewfinder and pressing the shutter release. And from the current comments, it appears that filling the frame is the next big step for me. It shouldn't be that difficult. I hope.
Hi Jim, to me that looks much better, however with the kit you have you have no excuses for not nailing the subject , as ISO isn't an issue when exposed correctly, just get a good SS.
Not sure about 'filling the frame', composition I feel comes with time, but also it may be subjective too?
You were there, so you know the colours, I just very quickly tried to balance things out. The Heron has noise because of the exposure, but the perch has character & good detail. My advice, get a good exposure with a fast enough SS. Avoid heft cropping and keep you Workflow simple and forget about vignettes and all the other 'bolt-ons' they just help to make the image 'pretty'. If you get the basics right in the capture and in PP, then you can play with Third Party stuff because your image will have been correctly shot and processed.
I just adjusted the BKG & perch, the Heron is as per your RP
Looking much better! But be careful about lowering luminance on a color channel. That will flatten out the color. Do as much as you can in Temp and Tint, which will preserve the tonal relationship of colors better.
Your 500 should be wonderful with a 1.4X on it. It will be a little harder to keep flying birds in the focus point, but so worth it for the added pixels on the subject. It or the 2X will be wonderful for a posed subject. The main caution there will be atmospheric shimmer (which is worse with heat and humidity but can be significant in cool air too). Shoot a distant object to get a fix on how bad it is.
Thanks for your help, Steve. I'm not looking for an excuse.
Just a 'turn of phrase' Jim.
Jim just make sure the camera is set-up correctly and to how you like to shoot, it's not something you just take out the box, but set-up correctly, it will deliver what you want, with more keepers too.
Grasping the basics of shooting doesn't take long because of the defined lines i.e. ISO, SS & DoF, comp takes perhaps a little longer, the bigger issue is PP and sadly the two work hand in glove, but the main issue I have seen time & time again is that folks get it right in camera then turn it into a disaster through bad PP, it can make or break an image. Why after all the hard work we put into achieving a capture, we just throw it away. Just get to grips with the basics of the Raw converter (both Raw & PS are very powerful tools) and what each slider does and how it effects the image, because you don't have to change all he sliders for an image, 9 times out of 10 it's only a few and in small increments, you start to ramp up Contrast or Clarity, Blacks and you have already put a big nail in the image. Contrast is less of an issue for Nikon, but Canon does suffer from Contrast. Also the 'Modules' are designed in a certain way so you 'drill' down between each module, creating a logic WF, if you start jumping from one bit of software to another, if the image looks crap, then you will not know where took along the paper trail. A phrase I use in Wildlife Forum is 'less is more' although there is a difference of option who started it first, however...
PS is great, but it's a Pandora's box which needs to be tamed, it's also a fantastic tool, not a crutch which some may think.
The best bit of advice I can suggest is look at the image and 'think' what needs to be done to get it to the end, even write it down i.e. WB, Contrast, Exp, HSL... and then follow the list in a logical order, in that way you may find things are easier and you don't stray. Obviously it may need to be refine as you think of something, but ONLY by understanding the problem can you solve the problem.
Steve, I appreciate the effort you made on your RP. But the background isn't what I saw. You are right. The original photograph is at least one stop underexposed. And you've brought up an issue I need to and will address. As for the piling, it looks rusty. And that's not what is there. There is rust under some white paint and lots of bird droppings. It only shows in small areas where the paint and droppings have flaked off. Also it looks heaver and conflicts more with the bird than I like. One of the things I addressed in my RP was to shorten the piling to minimize its role in the photograph.
Last edited by Jim Keener; 01-25-2016 at 11:57 AM.
I just went through this thread. It's full of meat: useful information. And for that I'm deeply grateful. Smart, experienced people took the time to help me get to where I want to go. Here are some takeaways:
Balance between crop and color and noise and . . . Overexpose and bring it down Get closer and/or longer lens Set good shutter speed In general don’t worry about ISO with 5D III or 1DX Avoid hefty cropping Simplify workflow Be careful lowering luminance Get longer! Test to learn about atmospheric shimmer. Insure camera is set up correctly. Less is more. Look at the image and think Write it down
The last two are especially important for me. I get anxious when I'm shooting. I don't have the experience base for photography to be a language for expression, but am still at a place where it's all a puzzle. Thinking and writing, I am now convinced, are the most likely tools I can engage to get there.
There is great value in this critique process. And I'm amazed it's available to me.
Jim first thanks for sharing obviously it's such a stunning bird and even after the enlightening discussion and critique I still love the image. Secondly the enlightening discussion had been really helpful to me aswell especially Steve's comment about what one does in post and what one is trying to achieve even writing it down.
Jim, special thanks on a two fold level here three fold if one adds in your "sum up"
Jim, what a wonderful thread this has been. I have learn't so much! I think I suffer from much the same problems as you. But I'm sure with a bit of time, and lots of practice we will both start to get the images we are dreaming of.
We are indeed fortunate to have the experience and knowledge...and encouragement, so freely given.
Thanks you two. This thread has been a bit exhausting for me. I began learning photography in August 2014 and captured this image in October. So I'm heavily invested in it. It's something that acts like a magnet on me, pulling me into looking more closely at birds.
I began learning photography (or trying to) in the 1960s, so your progress is 1000x faster than mine! Don't be discouraged. Your notes above are great. Don't expect them to be automatically learned, though.
Today I was photographing some ducks with the light behind them, just for ID and the heck of it, having not found much else worthy, when a Northern Harrier made a pass. I quickly got on it, tracked it reasonably well (the 400 DO II with the 1.4X isn't at all bad for BIF), had back button focus on, as always, so I was on AI Servo, was on M exposure for the dark side of ducks on a foggy day; but after it bugged out I realized my SS was way too low, at 1/500. (And the light was lousy so I wouldn't have gotten much anyway.)
A couple of the shots were keepers but only for the memory. And this is not the last time I will learn that lesson. When the bird circles away in a pose you would delete anyway, glance at the SS.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 01-25-2016 at 09:38 PM.
I can picture you there. Northern Harriers are favorites of mine. For one thing, I can identify them. White patch on the rump and their hopping, skipping, hovering over a field. I've seen one bird terrorize hundreds, perhaps thousands of Snow Geese.
That sounds amazing! I've never seen a male, to my knowledge. Someday I hope to get a decent picture of either one. Our marine layer humidity and Bay Area fringe air pollution doesn't help matters.
We see them frequently in the southwest. Often at the Salton Sea, where I saw one go after the geese. He had some competition from another, and I got some archival shots of their posturing. I see Northern Harries most every day I'm at the Bosque del Apache.
Green Heron (Butorides virescent) in the Early Morning Light
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, as ISO isn't an issue when exposed correctly, just get a good SS. 
