Green Heron, adult

[Dave Kilpatrick]

Adult Green Heron in the vicinity of a nest site. Adults were feeding two broods of juveniles, one brood in the nest and the other in the near vicinity. Very wary bird.

D300, 300mm f/2.8 with 1.4 TC. ISO 1600, 1/200 at f/4. Shot in early morning. Cropped 35%

[Sandra K. Mathews-Benham]

Beautiful image, very soft, but the green heron is vivid. The branch in the foreground is a little distracting, but it would take a lot of work to remove it, indeed. I'm somewhat of a realist, however, and actually like blurred images like that in the foreground--giving the viewer a sense of "peeking in". I am guessing others will disagree ;-)

[Dave Mills]

Hi Dave, Good that you managed a clean view of the subject without branches in it's front. I would crop the top down to a little above the small branch above the birds head. This will get rid of alot of space which isn't adding much to the image and focus in more at the bird.However this will make the crop more than 50% which could cause some degradation. I might also run a round of sharpening on the bird and if this were mine take out the whitish area behind the bird...

[David Thomasson]

Nice composition. The blurred branch isn't terribly hard to take out. If there are enough pixels, I would crop it down considerably, something like below -- also would tone down the brightest yellow in the background and open shadow details on the heron.

[Dave Kilpatrick]

Thanks Sandra. I took several photos of this bird, each time moving closer. I realize that there are distracting elements and I am always torn between getting them out of the image or leaving them in and more accurately reflecting the environment around the subject. As long as the subject is sharp, I don't mind. In this case even the Heron was a little soft. Wildlife seldom poses for us as in a studio.

[Dave Kilpatrick]

Hi Dave, Good that you managed a clean view of the subject without branches in it's front. I would crop the top down to a little above the small branch above the birds head. This will get rid of alot of space which isn't adding much to the image and focus in more at the bird.However this will make the crop more than 50% which could cause some degradation. I might also run a round of sharpening on the bird and if this were mine take out the whitish area behind the bird...

Thanks Dave. Just getting started with wildlife photography and am torn between getting portraits of birds, etc. and with getting a landscape in which the wildlife is just a part. Has to a balance somewhere, just not sure where. Your comments about sharpening, etc. are well taken. Still learning (experimenting) with processing. All I use is Aperture 3 which, I believe, is very similar to Lightroom and I am slowly getting smarter on its capabilities. To date, most of my images are exactly as they come out of the camera. Small amount of edge sharpening and a little highlight recovery is about all.

[Dave Kilpatrick]

Nice composition. The blurred branch isn't terribly hard to take out. If there are enough pixels, I would crop it down considerably, something like below -- also would tone down the brightest yellow in the background and open shadow details on the heron.

Thanks David. A lot to learn about processing in my future. Never been too good with removing distractions as significant as that branch and, as I have alluded to elsewhere in this thread, all I use is Aperture 3.

What did you do to remove that branch?

[David Thomasson]

Thanks David. A lot to learn about processing in my future. Never been too good with removing distractions as significant as that branch and, as I have alluded to elsewhere in this thread, all I use is Aperture 3.

What did you do to remove that branch?

Sorry, I missed the reference to Aperture. I used the clone stamp in Photoshop