Black-crowned Night Heron

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image along Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive in Apopka, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciate. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D7000
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED shot at 400mm
1/3200 F/5.6 Matrix Metering 0 EV ISO 1000, camera supported by a monopod
Post processed in Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC 2017
Cropped for theme to show head and eye

[Glenn Pure]

Nice shot, especially the long white plume down the side. However, the shot looks soft to me.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Nice shot, especially the long white plume down the side. However, the shot looks soft to me.

Hi Glenn, thank you for viewing and commenting. I did a little work on the image since reading your comments. I raised the contrast and added a small amount of clarity in Lightroom.

[gail bisson]

Hi Joe,
Great looking eye. The repost is much better in terms of sharpness but there is some weird stuff going on in the feathers on the back and wing.. They look noisy and crunchy.
Also, when you did your NR on the BG you didn't do a clean selection on the bits of stray feathers on forehead.They look fuzzy.
Gail

[Daniel Cadieux]

A great looking subject. Nice to have the full plume showing. The IQ is not what it usually is in your images - perhaps the crop was a little much?

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, very much appreciated. I think I agree with Daniel that I cropped too much trying to highlight the eye. Lesson learned... Thanks again all.