Ibis on the flats

[Connie Mier]

On Florida Bay, Everglades.
Sony a700, 70-400mm Sony lens
1/250, ISO400, f5.6, 400mm, manual mode, evaluative metering
Postprocessing: cleaned up very spots showing on water, some crop, graduated filter to darken foreground, sharpening mask on bird. All critiques welcomed.
Connie

[Ramon M. Casares]

Nice image! I would only brighten the eye a bit and make a pano crop. The rest loos very nice, light, pose reflection, colors, BG.
Congratulations.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the angle, pose and calm water. I might crop a bit off the top and put the bird further to the left in the frame and would tone down the whites, they are partially overexposed.

[Aidan Briggs]

Love the peaceful mood here. Nice light, low angle, and head turn. I would leave the crop as it is. The bird looks soft to me. Did you sharpen the image before or after you re-sized?

Keep them coming.

[Connie Mier]

Thank you for the feedback everyone. Aidan, I did sharpen it but after cropping it (but before resizing it for web). I used sharpening mask in LR. It started off being a little softer than optimal, probably due to slow shutter speed. Its good to have expert eyes examine these things!
Connie

[Aidan Briggs]

Connie, You will get better results if you sharpen your image after you re-size it for web presentation. When you re-size an image you lose a bit of crispness, so sharpening before you re-size is less effective than sharpening after.

[Mark Dumbleton]

Like the simpleness here. A little sharpening as Aidan says will be beneficial.

[Chris Kotze]

Lovely soft colours and a super pose. Ditto sharpening

[Connie Mier]

Here's a fixed version per your above comments. I cropped it on top and on the left, resized it for web and sharpened the head and brightened the eye. I think it improved the photo, thank you!
Connie

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The repost looks much better!

[Juan Aragonés]

Composition in the repost looks much, much better. It is amazing how important is to crop a litle bit of room from acompositional point of view (or, much better, compose directly in the camera). The poose of the ibis is really nice, good eye contact and the raised legs is great. Love the soft light, and mood of the scene. Very good job Connie :-)

[Daniel Belasco]

What can I say. I agreed with the comments so far and the cleaned up image looks fine.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Very nice repost Connie. The boys above led you down the right path and you knew how to translate that into your image. Way to go!