Lovely Little Blue and it looks very nicely sharp on my monitor. At first glance I wasn't real sure about he foreground blur, but that isn't it, it is the strong line of color change right above the heron. That with the FG blur seems to cut the image into 3 distinct parts with the bird in the middle? This is certainly an image worth working on, lovely bird!
Very nice capture of this Little Blue, and I really like the softness of the reflection. I would suggest a slight clockwise rotation; to my eye it appears that the "line" between the blue and green of the background is going slightly uphill. I might also crop some off the top so that the bird isn't centered as much.
kristin -
There are a lot of positives for a 1st post - lovely bird and refelction, soft background and i think it is positioned where i would have put it in the frame. The heron could probably have been sharpened a bit more for web posting ( see other threads) and agree with CWR
the main issue is where the boundary bertween the blue sky and green water should have been. being just above the heron is probably worst position. by moving you camera position upward or downward you can control its location. i would have tried to lower my camera a bit more to get the green border higher above the bird with less sky
if you have questions about workflow, you have to describe what you did
nice job and hope to see more posts
Thank you everyone for the comments and suggestions. The area where the blue and green form a "line" is where the low tide, marshy, muck area dropped off to a little bit deeper, clear of grass area in the water... would you recommend that I soften the line some or try to crop more of the blue out per Cindy's suggestion and then maybe photoshop the remaining blue out of the picture by cloning the green, marshy area? I have several wonderful shots of this little fella as he played with his seafood breakfast yet they all suffer from that same "line" issue so I am looking to see what I might can do to rescue them all :)
kristen -
i'd move the "line" up using PS
but instead of cloning, because of the large area involved learn how to use mask layers either from a book or Robert O'Tooles APTATS-1 disk (see Artie's website - http://www.birdsasart.com/aptats.htm ) It's well worth the $25. I'd then blur the new BG with the existing to smooth out the transitions.
the photo's can be rescued but it will take some work
kristen -
i'm surprised no one commented on the ethics of my last reply. By distorting or moving the troublesome boundary line, you are effectively changing your photograph to an image reflecting your artistic impressions. If it were ever posted or published, the changes would have to be cited . There's been a lot of discussion about this issue in the thread about baiting the owl with mice. It's OK by me, but others might raise objections. As to which way to go (up or down), somewhere in one of Artie's book, there is a preferred approach. Good luck.
Little Blue Heron
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