I went out to Forsythe on Friday after work as tropical storm Hannah was bearing down on us. Low light, poor light, it was all bad but did manage this shot along with several full body shots. Got as low as I could. I was on a bridge over an outfall with tall reeds on either side. As usual all help and guideance is appreciated.
Canon 40D
100-400 5.6
F / 5.6
1/125 sec
ISO 800
Shot from inside my car
Raw converted using Bibble
Sharpened the eye mostly with a small amount of sharpening along the back and top of head
40D set to neutral picture style
Moderate crop
I like the pose very much, looks contemplative. I would have liked to see the whole bird., but I guess he was obscured by something? If it wasn't too ugly I think I would have included it. I might saturate a little more or add a liittle black to the neutrals and blacks via selective colour if you have photoshop. Very nice.
Thank you very much Jackie. I do have quite a few shots of the whole bird and really contemplated posting one of those. He was preening himself quite a bit. He was also sitting on a bit of the bridge structure and I wasn't quite sure how that would go over. I do have Photoshop and was hoping folks would give me some direction on improvements. It's all appreciated.
Hi Dave Interesting crop and it works Might take a little more of the bottom !! Love the turn back and prominent eye.
PS work looks good I did a curves adjustment and it lighten the bg and game me more detail in the feathers. Also added some neutral and black in selective color. Yours was very close !!!
Thanks Alfred. I really like the difference in your repost. It seems to have much more life to it. I can really see clearly (even with my old eyes:)) the difference in detail in the back feathers. Forgive my inexperience, but when you guys talk about adding this and that in selective color are you refering to the quick mask technique in APTATS, or is it something I have missed in PS. I'm using CS2
When talk about adding is referring to increasing something. One of the easiest enhancements to use is the selective color. Go to image>adjust>selective color. A dialog box will come up. From there select neutral then black. Add a couple of points to each (sometimes you need more) and the image will pop. It only affects those shades.
I can get the same results using curves but its much easier to get into trouble. If you use this tool might have the image just a little lighter and then use selective color. btw can also use to affect any other color you wish.
.................... and hopefully there will lots more to come :)
Do keep in mind there are many different methods of ending with the same end result. Its up to you to pick the one that will be most useful. For most of the images I post the total time spent is under two minutes (start to finish) Occasionally there is something extra special that I will take more time but I'm brutal deleting.
I'm glad that you mentioned that Alfred. Those comments are the main reason I read just about every post that I can here ( in most all forums). It is amazing how different folks attack challenges in different ways, and how much you can learn from just reading what others have done (equipment, camera technique, post processing, etc.). Without trying to sound too gushy, I feel this is why this probably the best site going for learning nature and bird photography (Although I have miles to go) Thanks again, and I'll keep posting, some good, some bad, but I'll learn from all.
Immature Night Heron
