Green Heron

[Anthony Barsotti]

Here's one from Sunday at a spot in PA with a good amount of Green Heron activity. Shot with my Canon 1DX Mark II and 600mm f/4 IS II with the 2x Extender III. Shot just after sunrise at ISO 1600 1/1250 f/8, Topaz AI Clear was used for general noise reduction and sharpening and then I applied an unsharp mask in Photoshop to the face and feather detail. Cloned a couple of distractions out of the background but overall a pretty minimal edit on this one. Hope you like it, thanks for looking.

[kevin Hice]

Anthony nice shot. Maybe just a little big in the frame could use some room in the rear. Bird looks good nice and sharp.Not sure what is going on with specular highlights. Are they water droplets? A little distracting TFS

[Anthony Barsotti]

Anthony nice shot. Maybe just a little big in the frame could use some room in the rear. Bird looks good nice and sharp.Not sure what is going on with specular highlights. Are they water droplets? A little distracting TFS

Thanks Kevin, I might play around with adding some canvas in Photoshop. Those are water droplets though yeah, pretty sure they were coming from the minnow in his beak but it's hard to tell.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Very nice Shot. Bird looks nice and sharp to me. I would take some canvas at the bottom to remove the dark element in the bottom left corner.

TFS

[Ivan Sjogren]

Nice action here Anthony!
The light is really nice and adds dynamic against the dark background. Great pose, details and exposure. I like the log and the green vegetation, although I wish that the green line behind the bird was less sharp and faded more into the rest of the background. I would also try to remove the shadow in the left corner. As mentioned by the others I also think this frame needs more room. I like the droplets though and don't find them distracting.

[Bill Dix]

Great Green Heron pose in a nice setting. One more vote for more room, right and left, if you have it. If not, it was probably a case where the 2X was unnecessary -- he must have been pretty close. Nice sharp detail on the head. Good crop suggestion from Krishna. I like the sharp water droplets, but not so much the oof highlights.

[Dorian Anderson]

Really stellar frame with lovely lighting and action! I think the droplets are great, but I too wish for more room all around.

[Anthony Barsotti]

I definitely wish that I had had more room to work with on this, this is completely uncropped. I was shooting at 1200mm to get portraits but then this guy moved and started fishing so I just worked with what I had. I might try to add canvas in Photoshop all around, I usually try to avoid that but I think it might help here. Thanks again for all the C&C!