Black-crowned Night Heron

[Tom Walter]

Request suggestions for improving the background. I like the birds pose and detail but it seems to me that the dark background competes with the Black-crowned Night Heron drawing attention away from the bird. What do you think? I have tried to make the background lighter by reducing the saturation and increasing lightness, but am not super pleased with the result.

This was taken at the Lake Renwick Heron Preserve in Plainfield, IL.

Nikon D200
Nikon 70-300 4.5-5.6G VR
1/1600 sec at f 8 and 220 mm
ISO 400
Hand held

[Fabs Forns]

Compo is good and if you captured the bird against a busy BG, it is what it is.
I used Viveza to lighten the underwings and Gaussian blue, selectively, in the BG. Also tried to minimize the shadow line. Hope you like it.

I think it's a Great Blue Heron, though.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Nice pose and BG, Fabs' repost makes it even stronger and yes, it's a Great Blue Heron. Night-Herons are noticeably smaller.

[Juan Aragonés]

Too bad the the BG is so busy but you did a very good job on the composition. Th epose of the bird works very fine in my opinion :)

[Tom Walter]

Thanks for the correcting the bird ID. I don't know why I called it a Black-crowned Night Heron.

Tom