I was photographing this Great Blue Heron at Lake Morton when it turned, looked down, and stuck it's tongue out. Dark overcast day, not the best conditions. I tried to make the best of it in post processing.
Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.
Nikon D7000
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED shot at 260mm (390mm FFE)
1/500 F/8 Matrix Metering +11/3 EV ISO 500
Post processed in Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC
Cropped for composition and presentation
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
I like the head on view, the tongue visible and the eyes and the hi key feel. Pity the bird wasn't on your level, despite it is interesting as well how it is looking down on you. TFS.
Hi Joe, being backlit you did well under the circumstances and to capture the tongue just protruding, like the quirky/jaunty head.
More SS (again ) and the image would have been sharper, likewise I think you could have gained a bit more DoF too, but this wasn't planned. I also like the fact the subject is looking down and to me, the angle isn't steep. You need to square it up as the trim is not level at the foot, it diagonal left to right. I might just tweak the Tint (in Raw, less green), but addressing other colours will bring more out, likewise adding some Clarity (which you can now do, welcome to the CC club ). Blacks are clipped in the shadows of the wing, you need to look at this in PP, you know how.
Joe, just recalibrating screens with some new Hardware/Software so...
Blue looks a bit hard and it looks a bit dark? Look at the crop at the foot, same issue, you'll see what I mean. Always remember just look for the clipped blacks!!!!
What an imposing view this is...looks like an 8 foot tall heron! I love the yes shifted towards us, pretty cool. Good comp, but you need to come up just a tad to hide the white canvas at the bottom edge that surely appeared after rotating the image.
Hi Steve, Bill and Dan, the white area at the bottom caused by rotating the image to level the eyes has been fixed. Thank you both for catching and suggesting that.
Last edited by Joseph Przybyla; 04-16-2016 at 03:09 PM.
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
This Bird Stuck It's Tongue Out...
Joseph Przybyla thanked for this post
) and the image would have been sharper, likewise I think you could have gained a bit more DoF too, but this wasn't planned. I also like the fact the subject is looking down and to me, the angle isn't steep. You need to square it up as the trim is not level at the foot, it diagonal left to right. I might just tweak the Tint (in Raw, less green), but addressing other colours will bring more out, likewise adding some Clarity (which you can now do, welcome to the CC club
). Blacks are clipped in the shadows of the wing, you need to look at this in PP, you know how.
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