Great Blue Heron with Breeding Plumes

[Chris R. Johnson]

My first post on this site. Taken at 8am 4-6-2017 in Milpitas, California, using a Canon 7D mark ii with Canon 400mm USM. Post-processing included some sharpening, <20% crop, saturation (~15%), and adjustments to blacks/blues in Photoshop Raw.

SS: 1/1000
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO: 1250
Exp Comp: 0
Mode: Aperture Priority
Metering: Evaluative

Comments and Critiques welcomed. Thanks for looking!

Chris Johnson

[John Mack]

Really like the pose of the bird and the background is nice.

[Isaac Grant]

Welcome. Like John I like the pose and the background as well. The photo as posted is too small. You can post up to 800 wide on these shots and it is easier to critique the larger photos.

Also looks like the whites on the top of the head are over exposed. Not sure what the RAW was like but on a shot like this I would typically lower the contrast -1 in DPP, lower the highlights -4 or 5 to try and get that area back. If you get it close in PS you could always burn that area only. Typically I create a separate layer. Change the opacity to somewhere between 8 and 30%. Set the hardness of your brush to between 20 and 40% and use a soft brush. Go over that area a few times and see if you can get it back to where the whites properly exposed.

I also think you could lift the exposure on the body as well. I would start in DPP where I would probably raise the shadows + 1 or 2 and see how that looked. Could also make adjustments many ways in PS to the exposure. No one way is best for that.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Welcome to BPN Chris! I like the pose and the elegant breeding plumes. Good BG as pointed out. Looks like you had a bit of a backlighting situation here? That can be tricky on the contrast - which looks to be strong here. You had the right idea going vertical here, but I do think pointing your lens down a bit more would have provided an even stronger composition. Posted small, but at this size it looks like you have good details.

[Chris R. Johnson]

Thanks for the feedback all. It looks like I boosted Whites too much in Photoshop Raw which caused the overexposure of the whites on the top of the head (the original image did not have clipping warnings/spike on the right side of histogram). I do like the idea of separating this section into a separate layer and processing it separately. I will attempt to upload a modified image in the near future.