Reddish Egret

[Gavin Spooner]

Tigertail Beach, Fl
Sun June 14th 8pm
Nikon D2h + Nikon 400mm afs II
1/800s
f4
400 iso
tripod

I was shooting Skimmers but the balletic pose of the Reddish Egret fishing and the pleasant evening light is what made this image stand out for me.

cheers
gavin

[Kobus Tollig]

Great pose and action. Like the light well done. Does the image need a CW rotation?

[Morkel Erasmus]

what a stunning pose and shot in great light! agree with Kobus just a slight CW rotation to straighten the water level, but not so much as to make the bird look like it's falling forward ;)

[Mark Dumbleton]

Superb pose and timing in such good light. Agree on CW rotation. I really like this - well done!

[Steve Canuel]

Great pose. Agree with a slight bit of CW rotation. Perhaps a tiny bit of additional sharpening as well.

[Kiran Poonacha]

Great action frozen sir.. you could call it skimming egret :-)

[Randy Stout]

Gavin;

Wonderful timing and pose. Very nice light.

I might consider increasing the contrast just a couple of points. This gives the impression that the bird is sharper, helps it stand out more from the background. Not much, or you lose the softness, but I tried a few points and liked it.

Nice job of taking advantage of your opportunities.

I always go out with a plan of what I am trying to capture, but try to be flexibe!

Cheers

Randy

[Ramon M. Casares]

Agree with all the comments above.
Great timing and light though.
Congratulations!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Cool pose and colors. I agree on rotation and wish the sun would have been behind you.

[Stu Bowie]

Cool running posture, and I like the colours in this. CW rotation covered, and well captured.

[Gavin Spooner]

Thanks for all the comments.

Here is an edited version. 1 degree cw rotation, which I wouldn't have seen myself so thanks. A little added contrast but didn't want to lose the softness, but saying that I think I overdid the sharpening on this edit. i did add a little saturation boost.



cheers
Gavin

[Randy Stout]

Gavin:

I think somewhere between the two would be very nice. When I worked on the image, I found that I really didn't need to add sharpening as much as the slight boost in contrast ( which really is what sharpening does anyway).

It is a matter of taste, but the original feel was so soft, I didn't want to overdo it.

Randy

[Gavin Spooner]

Randy;

Thanks and I agree.

Gavin

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Yes, it does look a bit oversharpened. When you apply sharpening look at the long chest feathers, when they start to look jagged then you need to sharpen less.

[Juan Aragonés]

Gavin I love the action on this one. Very good. The original file seems very soft to my taste. Did you run noise reduction filter on it? The second one is much better but I think that something between both images would be great.

[Gavin Spooner]

Gavin I love the action on this one. Very good. The original file seems very soft to my taste. Did you run noise reduction filter on it? The second one is much better but I think that something between both images would be great.

Juan.

No NR. what happened is that my current upload process is with Picassa. I forgot that the max image size I can copy and post from there is 800px wide and I did my PP for a 900px wide image. I have noticed that images reposted from picassa seem to be a little soft, and i am a prone to not oversharpen (except in the last edit). here is a final inbetweener. As I saved it in cs3 save for web it introduces a little more jaggies than the image shows while working on it. Anyway I think this is a good compromise. Thanks for all the advice.

cheers
Gavin