Great Egret with fish!

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

It`s my first post in 800 pixels,I think it`s much better!!!
The BG It`s a bit noisy,who knows a good way for BG noise reduction!
This shot was taken in Moronis lake in Greece,November 2007
Little crop at the bottom
Canon 40 D Canon EF 500mm f/4 1.4x TC
1/200 f 5.6 iso 1000
Thanks for looking!

[Jim Poor]

A lot of people use plug-ins for noise reduction, but I haven't bought one yet. Selecting the background and doing a Surface Blur or slight Gaussian Blur usually works for me.

This is a very interesting picture. On one hand, I wish for the eye, but on the other, I like it with just the bill as shown.
I think I would clone out the breast / neck feathers on the left as they don't add anything to the image for me.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Interesting composition. It would be interesting to see a crop that includes the eye of the bird. I agree regarding the noisy BG.

[Thomas Block]

Good catch :-)
It is easy to remove the noise in PS without using a plug in if you have a monochrome BG:

1. Select the BG with the Magic Wand
2. Contract selection 7 pix
3. Smooth selection 3 pix
4. Use Gaussian Blur or the Noise reduction (don´t know the right name in English) from PS CS2 or CS3

Here is the result (I use the tool “focus magic” for the fish)…

All the best
Thomas

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

Thanks a lot Thomas!!!

[Kaushik Balakumar]

different & interesting composition...
i use neatimage for noise removal.

rgds,
Kaushik

[John Cooper]

An interesting composition that you have presented here Manos. The bright yellow bill on the diagonal has impact, but because the fish is not entirely in focus I feel a sharp eye of the egret would have been beneficial here.