Hi chris. You managed to get a good angle and pose of this wind-swept Heron! I find the cropping a bit tight though and the focus is a little soft - another round of sharpening would help. White face around the eye is looking hot, were there any pixels here before you started processing?
There isn't much room around the bird, so the image is too crowded, or as John said, the cropping is too tight.
The whites look over exposed, or "hot". This may mean the pixels were saturated by overexposure when you made the image or it is possible that you over processed the image later on.
All digital image usually require some degree of sharpening. Just the nature of the beast. Since the bird looks a little soft, some sharpening is in order.
May I suggest you look at posting in "Eager to Learn"? That might be a better place to get a handle on proper exposures, cropping, processing, etc.
Nice find and pose. Richard summed it well up what could be improved. You should leave more room for the 'virtual' legs, in other words the parts of the legs that are submerged should be treated as if they were visible. It is very difficult to expose a bird like this properly since there are only few bright areas in the plumage. I would try a bit negative exposure compensation and try to balance shadows and highlights in your RAW converter.
Some good points already mentioned. Can I ask if you were using a tripod? Or is this a large crop?
If you are not using a tripod I would highly recommend it as it will give you that extra stability and also often makes you take that extra second to think about composition.
No no tripod and the image is captured from a viewing platform at a wetland and is quite heavily cropped to remove weed and scum on the water surface, I will revisit the original and see what improvements I can make.
White Faced Heron
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