Birds in Habitat

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi All,

Thought September's project sounded like fun so I looked through my files and found this Great Blue Heron shot that I thought fit the bill. In the original capture the heron is dead center in the frame so prior to posting I decided to move the heron (without cropping) to roughly one third from the right-hand side of the composition. This heron was photographed in a marsh/bog on Horseshoe Lake near Parry Sound, Ontario.

D200, ISO 200, 80-400 VR lens @ 270mm, f5.6 @ 1/180 sec., handheld from canoe.

Look forward to comments.

Andrew

[Mike Tracy]

I like the field, scattered about flowers and inquisitive look of the bird. Image looks like you should reduce the contrast some and selectively sharpen the head.

[Randy Stout]

Andrew:

A somewhat unusual habitat image for a GBH, and thus fun. Mike hit the point about the contrast, which was my first thought when I opened the image.
It is almost like he is saying, Hey, where is the water around here!"

Cheers

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

Moving the bird a bit more to our right if possible would help. Yes to reduced contrasted and also a bit of reduced SAT. I like both the foreground and BKGR habitats.

I am curious: how did you move the heron without cropping?

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks for comments.

Randy, actually the heron is right at the water's edge. A couple of herons frequent this marsh and often hunt on the peat mat for watersnakes and such.

Arthur, I moved the heron without cropping the image by using one of the PDF tutorials in Robert O'Toole's APTATS 2 (composition correction without cropping). Since I shoot with a D200 I really don't like to crop my images, but since learning this APTATS technique I am able to adjust compositions that I wish I had shot differently in the field, or if the sharpest image in a series is not the best composition I can now make it better. These APTATS tutorials are awesome. I worry about cropping with the D200 as the file size is small compared to what some cameras offer these days. As a result, this technique allows me to keep the file size the same.

I'll try to make the suggested adjustments and repost tomorrow. Off to bed, alarm goes off at 3:30 am for commute to Toronto.

Thanks again for comments,
Andrew

[Daniel Cadieux]

Beautiful setting Andrew - if I hadn't read your opening comment I would have thought you took this on land!. Ditto the contrast (which was also mt first thought). Excellent post-processing job on the bird relocation:cool:. Getting the comp right in-camera is always the best option (I'm sure you already know that!), but man this is the next best thing. Hope your commute went well...

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Andrew, Thanks for the info on APTATS. I think that I have heard of it :)

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks for all the comments thus far, much appreciated.

Based on all of your suggestions, I have reduced the contrast and saturation and moved the heron a little more to the right. I also decided to fix the little bit bright area just under and a smidge left of the eye. It was starting to bother me.

I originally composed the heron dead center as I was thinking it might make a nice calendar shot, but now I much prefer the heron off to the side.

Daniel, commute went well. The nice thing about driving down highway 400 at 4am is that there's nobody out there.

Arthur, I thought you may have heard of APTATS :D

Once again looking forward to all your comments.

[Arthur Morris]

Much, much better. Centered would have worked OK with the bird looking right down the lens barrel.