Taken in Tampa Bay just out from the Alafia River from James Shadle's pontoon boat.
EOS 1D MKIII
500mm f/4L IS USM
Tripod + Wimberly II Head
Manual mode
Evaluative metering
f/7.1
iso 400
1/1250
Processed with ACR and CS5. Nothing cloned or added. Slight crop off the right side for composition purposes. Again, we were working manual mode with the central sensor only because of the different species moving against varied backgrounds. I was attempting to focus lock on the head/eye and then re-compose the shots in camera.
I am relatively new at this so take all this with a grain of salt, but since I like the picture - I thought I would try. I really like the pose, though I think if the head were turned away a couple of degrees it would have the effect of having the bird looking more at the viewer - in other words at less of an angle to the plane of the camera (I know in these situations sometimes you can not move fast enough to change position or the bird just does not turn). I like the soft detailing of the underside of the wings with the reflection of the water and the leg out of the water. I loaded the image into CS3 and saw that there were no areas that were blow out but the way the light hits the shoulders and wing edge (perhaps time of day - too late in AM?) they are a bit over bright. It is hard to tell, but is the foot that is out of the water OOF?
Lovely image, Joel. It's got movement, a great pose and a very good HA. You might be able to lessen/lighten the shadows on the tops of both wings if you wanted - either with a shadow/highlight adjustment, a curves adjustment or with Nik's Viveza plug-in.
I have looked at this for a while now and I can't see an area that doesn't feel nicely in focus. You did very well here!
Nice Joel- lovely soft colours and a fantastic, stunning pose! Love the composition too. The eye looks a little bright- this could have been caused by the sharpening.
Juvenile Little Blue Heron
