Juvenile BCNH Landing
Sony A850~Sony 70-400G@400mm~ISO1600~1/1600 sec~F6.3~manual exposure~overcast~HH~3-4-2011~Brazos Bend State Park, Texas~CS5
BCNH = Black-crowned Night Heron. Wasn't sure if I should clean up the water surface or foreground.
comments and critique welcomed. Regards~Bill
my website
Interesting tonality in this one Bill. The water looks like snow! You've captured great action here and I love the study of the different feathers all working to slow the bird down before landing. On my monitor (which is currently uncalibrated) I see a greenish cast to the image.
Bill:
At first glance I thought he was landing on a snow white beach.
The action is excellent, wing spread and feet out.
I would probably fiddle around with curves a bit to see what different adjustments did to the whited out water. If however, you really want a complete high key effect, I would then clean up most of the small debris in the water. Probably not the grass or log though.
Cheers
Randy
I like the pose and action. As it is the eye pops out beautifully, but I would also like to see a little more contrast in the image as a whole. As John, I see a slight greenish cast, but on a calibrated monitor.
Hi Bill, I really like the landing pose and great detail on the eye and underwing area. Good action capture. As for cleaning up the water and foreground, I think it's your call depending on how you are going to use the image. I'm with Randy on thinking the water could be cleaned up a bit but I feel that the grass is fine and the log needs to be there as it looks like the bird is going to land on it. The color shift is a bit odd, as I read a slight magenta cast to parts of the bird and a slight green cast to other parts as well as the water. I just calibrated my monitor a few days ago and the calibration strip at the bottom of the page looks neutral to me.
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
Please visit me on the web at http://kerryperkinsphotography.com
Thanks John, Randy, Ben, Kerry. About the greenish cast and what happened to the background. During the winter the dreaded duckweed dies back, but just my luck it hs started to grow back in the area the image was taken. The greenish cast was terrible, and I dropped the greens almosy all the way in ACR, which didn't get rid of all of it on tthe bird, and also made the background white. Then I tried to shift toward magenta , and it still didn't work too well. I guess I could have left the background green and color corrected the bird only. I'm not sure what my best course of action should be.
Kerry made a good point on how I would use the image, knowing how I like playing with such images that could end uo in OOTB as a fractalius or topaz image with a high-key background.
Appreciate the feedbak. regards~Bill
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