Taken on Santiago Island, Galapagos in April 2009. I'm pretty sure this is a Lava Heron a/k/a Galapagos Heron. Unfortunately the light was already rather harsh. I hope the HA police think this is only a minor infraction and let me off with a warning.
Canon 50D
100-400 @ 400mm
1/400
f7.1
ISO 400
HH, some S/H adjustments, USM selectively applied, contrast increase
What a cool looking bird! I agree that the light is harsh, but you did well under the circumstances. Since I'm hiding out from the HA police myself, I won't say anything there (actually, HA is not bothering me here). Composition, color, and DOF is good!
Very fierce looking bird - wouldn't like to meet him in a dark alley :).
Sharpness is fine but maybe the bill could be sharpened a bit further. I would definitely try to blur the background a bit since I find the halos where the brown objecs meets the blue disturbing.
/Svante
Exposure and detail looks good. lower angle would have been nice. Agree the upper portion of the bkgr is distracting. Might consider crop a little off top and add a little room on the bottom
Rachel, a little lower angle here (I know...probably not possible or you would have done it) might have taken the few small distractions out of the equation and left you with a more pleasing BG. In my mind I'm thinking there might have been soft blue water instead of all that mud and I think that would have made a big difference in that he would have had a little more separation between the color of the bird and the color of the BG. As is, you might try either darkening the BG and slightly lighting the bird or vice versa, just to keep the head and bill from getting so lost in all that muck.
I'm giving you a pass on the HA...you can live to shoot another day. :)
Thanks for the comments. Here's a repost. Yes, unfortunately getting lower wasn't possible. I darkened the lava bg, blurred the water in the top left corner and another round of USM on the bill. I tried cropping but then the lack of sharpness on the bill became more apparent so no crop to get rid of the water.
Galapagos Heron
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