Dinner time

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Came across this great egret who was catching one terrapin after another...expertly I must add. The terrapin is not sharp because I did not get a high shutter speed and he was in the process of flipping it.

40d. 300 f/4L non-Is. 1.4x. hand-held. iso 500. 1/200. f/5.6. exp. comp +1. flash comp. -1 (I think I should have gone down further on that). Shot in shade.

I would have liked more room on the right but there is a very distracting OOF tree in the orig there.

All critiques welcome and appreciated.

[Doug Herr]

I think your flash comp is fine, I would like to see the photo a little lighter overall.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice feeding behaviour. I din't mind the prey item being a bit blurred from movement...gives it a sense of being still alive and struggling to escape.

flash comp. -1 (I think I should have gone down further on that)

Could be just me, but I think you could have actually gone HIGHER on that. I still like the result though. If you want more room at right you could always clone/patch out the tree instead of cropping it out - should be easy with this BG. You you have been able to step further to your right during capture to eliminate it in-camera?

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Doug, thx. I will go back to my RAW file and increase the exposure a bit. Admittedly, I am a little too paranoid about overexposing whites. still learning.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

a little better?

Daniel, I did not move to the right for background's sake. If I had done that, then I would have had a diagonal lake bank cutting right across the egret.

[Brian Barcelos]

I like the re post better. Very nice capture. Poor soft-shell, I just got my son his first pet turtle this week. I'm not going to show him this!;)
Brian

[Ed Cordes]

I too like the re post better. You achieved good detail. If you want more on the right you could add a bit of canvas to the image as presented. With the clean BG this should be easy to do.

[Stu Bowie]

Great repost with the whites. I would do some selective sharpening on the head and bill.