Green Heron at Anhinga Trail

[Julie Brown]

Canon 40D, 300mm f4L IS, ISO 160, f4.5 @ 1/250, 0 EV, pattern metering, manual mode (HH or may have shot from boardwalk from a tripod-can't remember):confused:

PP: Lightroom 2.6
cropped about 10% from left
set black and white points, added fill, highlight recovery
enhance clarity and vibrance, tweaked tone curve (medium contrast)
cloned out a lot of distracting floating vegetation in BG, removed dust spots
GND from bottom to tone down whites on rock
adjustment brush: brought down whites on bird, shiny yellow on legs

Nik plug-ins: Dfine for NR, Viveza to bring down whites and saturate colors, Sharpener Pro for output

This was my first visit to ENP. I was so excited to see and photograph these birds. Looking through my images I realize that I did not pay enough attention to working around the busy BGs.

I shot at this aperture to blur the BG. Did I get away with the shallow DOF, low ISO and SS in this image?
C&C appreciated?:)

[Bill Jobes]

Mission accomplished !
The bird is photographed beautifully, the rock and its reflections are magical, and the BG works for me!
All adjustments mentioned yield a wonderful image. :)

[Steve Canuel]

Looks good to me too. I like the rock and the bird's position. The reflection up front is a nice addition. There's a bit of noise in the BG. If mine, I'd darken it up even more to something like this.

[RichardCurtin]

Beautiful image. It is hard for me to get one of these isolated like this. Believe I like the original post best as the subdued but visible background seems to give it more dimension.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

I like the OP too. Depth of field has worked out perfectly IMO. One of my favorite birds. The reflection of the rock conveys the calm conditions very well. Real nice shot.

[arash_hazeghi]

Very beautiful Julie, I like the OP with more natural look, BG is not distracting at all. nice details too, wish the head was a bit more parallel to camera.

Well done

[Myer Bornstein]

I like the original picture more natural

[Paul Lagasi]

Julie, I also vote for original..I really like all the different colors, the rock, bird, background..well done

[Julie Brown]

Thanks to all of you for the great comments. It is a pleasant surprise.:)