White Faced Heron

[Lance Peters]

Going about his business...

D3S
Sigmonster @800mm
F5.6
1/1000TH
-0.7EV
400 ISO
Matrix Metering
Tripod

Comments welcome ;)

[Mark Young]

The composition is really nice here. I like the low angle you've used with the bird at a 45* angle to you.

[Joel Eade]

The exposure, sharpness, composition and background are excellent. The only thing I can nit-pick would be to clean up some of the debris on the water.

Very nicely done IMHO.

[Bob Miller]

Hey lance...beautiful gradations of color in the bird and the sharpness is amazing. Do you attribute the sharpness to the D3....If so i have too have one! I do agree some cleanup of the water may help the image.

[John Chardine]

Beauty Lance. Reminds me a bit of the Little Blue Heron we have here in NA. I like the lovely dark tones, and soft light. For the wall, I would agree that some water cleanup would be useful.

[Ray Rozema]

Agree w above, exposure and detail great. I'm neutral cleaning up the debris in the water. I would favor more direct eye contact but that does not fit with the desired compostion of it fishing.

TFS
Ray Rozema

[Lance Peters]

Hey lance...beautiful gradations of color in the bird and the sharpness is amazing. Do you attribute the sharpness to the D3....If so i have too have one! I do agree some cleanup of the water may help the image.

Hi Bob - no I don't attribute the sharpness to the D3S - mOre likely my sharpening procedure - tried many many different ways of sharpening - currently I am using Genuine Fractals (Photoshop plugin) with a set of actions by Noel Carboni (BPN member) that I adjust as necessary. Genuine FRactals has some nice options for texture enhancement. Noels actions are really good and cheap to boot - there is a thread in the educational resources forum that discusses sharpening - a example from Noel is in there.

Thanks for the comments people :)

[John Chardine]

Lance- I use Noel's sharpening actions (which involve using Genuine Fractals) for prints and have been very happy. Haven't used them for web posting yet though. I think he recommended to me running his actions on a double-sized version of the post (say 2048 x 1800) and then downsizing to the posted size followed by a little more sharpening if necessary. Is this what you do?

[Lance Peters]

Lance- I use Noel's sharpening actions (which involve using Genuine Fractals) for prints and have been very happy. Haven't used them for web posting yet though. I think he recommended to me running his actions on a double-sized version of the post (say 2048 x 1800) and then downsizing to the posted size followed by a little more sharpening if necessary. Is this what you do?

Hi John - For posting I use the full size image - sharpen with Noel's actions (Then - selection only - layer on top - then NIK Define on the BG ONLY) and then run a save for web action to size it down to a BPN friendly size.
GF really does a great job - I am especially fond of the max texture actions.

[Ray Rozema]

Another possible explanation for the sharpness is your techinque. I have noticed your pictures are almost always are tack sharp.

Ray Rozema