Big Red...

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image of a Reddish Egret at Ft. Desoto County Park in Pinellas County, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED, image captured at 400mm
1/2000 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV +2/3 ISO 640 Auto 1 WB, camera supported by a monopod
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2019 and Neat Image for noise reduction, beach cleanup
Cropped for composition and presentation

[David Roach]

Love the composition and the high key/pastel BG. Great to catch one still for a moment. I like the contemplative pose. Is this a molt? TFS

[Bill Dix]

Interesting and somewhat unusual shot of Big Red. He looks sort of salt-encrusted. Whatever it is, it makes the image look like a drawing. I like it.

[Dorian Anderson]

Image does have a very painterly quality, but I'm not sure if that was done deliberately or results from a processing artifact. The bird is soft and I cannot figure out what's going on with the pale/frosty back.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

I like the feet.

I want to know is this image was processed using any filters etc. I agree its more like a sketch.

For me the image quality of the bird does not hold up. Overall it looks good.

TFS

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, very much appreciated. I cannot determine exactly what might have made the image look like a drawing/painterly. In the original post there was noise on the bird which sharpening only made worse so I did use a lesser amount of sharpening. The morning was overcast and dark. I had biased the exposure to add light but now I would guess not enough. Here is a post showing the original as out of the camera and the active focus point and data. In answer to Krishna's question regarding the use of filters, the answer is no filters used. I do about 95 to 99 percent of the post processing in Lightroom Classic only using Photoshop for cloning and spot healing, also using the Neat Image plugin for noise reduction in Photoshop.

[Joseph Przybyla]

This is another version reducing the noise on the bird as suggested in Arash's guide to post processing. This maybe a tad dark, it depends I guess on the brightness of the display.

[John Mack]

I like the high key treatment. Always nice seeing big red. I don't think the raw is tack sharp. The framing and pose are nice.