Blue Heron

[Bill Foxworthy]

Taken today 8:06 am.
Canon 40D, Canon 70-200 f/4L at 200mm, Eval metering, A1Servo,
Manual Exposure, 1/1250, f/4.0, Handheld, flash did not fire.

[Tony Whitehead]

Good portrait, Bill. Must have been quite relaxed to let you close with the 70-200. I like the warm light on the head with drop off down the neck. May be worth exploiting this by burning in the upper corners a little to really pull the eye in to the face and eye. A little more sharpening may be possible to optimise web presentation.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the head angle, eye contact, sharpness and BG in this one. I might put the bird a bit higher in the frame. What ISO did you use?

[Bill Foxworthy]

Forgot the ISO. :( Using ISO 640, started at ISO 1000 at sunup and kept coming down. Had to reduce noise also, forgot that too. It walked right up to where I was at and soppped just a few feet away. Right after this it caught a frog and flew down with it. Maybe that was why so close?

[Marina Scarr]

Hi Bill: You did a great job with the angle here. I would put the bird just a bit higher in the frame.

[Doug Brown]

Nice head angle and light. I agree about a little additional sharpening and about placing the bird higher in the frame.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Very nice profile and BG.

Is this too sharp? just trying to help and learn, I hope you don't mind.

[Harshad Barve]

beautiful HA and compo ,
Lovely repost by Juan
TFS

[Paul Randall]

Hi Bill, I like this portrait very much. This might be a good one to give a touch of a vignetting effect (soft darkening from the corners). It already has a bit of it going on in the bottom corners.
Juan's repost looks great and well done for getting so close.

[Bill Foxworthy]

Thanks for your comments and suggestions. Lowering helped a lot and also sharpening is better. I think the bottom being darker is just the way the water was at time of shooting. My 70-200 is a fine lens and I really like it. I use it at this spot all the time, but not always. Usually I use my 5DII but I like to use my different cameras to keep the kinks out.
:)