Great Blue on a Perch

[Al Brown]

Hello,

Here's an image of a Great Blue Heron. I saw it perched on a fallen tree limb, at a local pond in Aug. of '09. It regularly sits there looking for a meal. I got off a few shots before it flew away. This was the best of the series I feel. It was edited with PSE 6.0. I did some cropping, used Shadow/Highlights, boosted the color saturation some and sharpend the eye. Critiques are welcomed, I am always looking to improve.

Here's the stats:

Sony A700
Tokina 100-300 F4
Manual Exposure
F8
ISO 100
EV. +1
1/60th
Fill Flash used

[Troy Lim]

Al,
I would tone down the saturation a bit. TFS.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Al - might be worth posting the original with just a straight conversion - PP looks a little off maybe.
:)

[Al Brown]

Here's the version from which the OP image came.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Al - Looking at it again !! Do you think there is a bit of a colour cast present?

How do you tell and if so - How could you fix it??

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Al one hint going your way !!! Look for casts in colors that are neutral !!!

[Fabs Forns]

IMO this is not a GBH but a Tri-colored Heron chick.

[David Thomasson]

I like it! I always like it when they stand on one stem ... though I often wonder why they do that. :confused:

Not sure about this dude's proper colors, but I'm guessing that with all that sunlit greenery around, there
would be a yellow-green cast on the feathers, so I adjusted accordingly.

Main thing I would suggest is pulling the subject and perch away from the background more (by brightening
the former and darkening the latter). I also blurred the background a little more. Nice shot.