I captured this image of a Cattle Egret in full breeding color and plumage at the rookery in the alligator breeding pond in Gatorland, Orlando, Florida. This image was captured on the same day as my previous post in April 2019. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.
Nikon D500
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED, camera and lens supported by a monopod
1/1250 F/8 Matrix Metering EV 0 ISO 720 Auto 1 WB, image captured at 350mm
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2020 and Neat Image for noise reduction
Cropped for composition and presentation
P.S. Learn more about Gatorland in the BAA Middle Florida Photography Site Guide that Artie and I co-authored. It is available at this link The BAA Middle of Florida Site Guide
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
Beautiful bird, well captured . You have got to love those colors, and the slightly varied background works well.
I might try to sharpen the front of the bill a bit more. I know it was a DOF issue, but you might be able to finesse out a bit more apparent sharpness.
Beautiful bird, well captured . You have got to love those colors, and the slightly varied background works well.
I might try to sharpen the front of the bill a bit more. I know it was a DOF issue, but you might be able to finesse out a bit more apparent sharpness.
Cheers
Randy
Hi Randy, thank you for viewing and commenting. I have already tried to add sharpening to the tip of the bill. It wouldn't take it, squiggly artifacts which made it look worse. So I added a tad of clarity and contrast which helped. The pitfalls of working this close, I had only a half an inch of depth of field, front to back, so I placed the active focus point on the eye. I could maybe have moved back and cropped more but then all those pixels would be thrown away and it would have brought the background more into focus.
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
In this situation, I take a few safe shots focusing on the eye, and then several part way along the bill, to try and distribute the dof over as much of the areas that need to be critically sharp as possible.