Great Blue Herons Nesting

[Linwood Ferguson]

Shot at Venice Rookery 3/26/11 with a D300, 200-400 @ 210, iso 400, F5.6 1/3000th.

I had quite a few of this male bringing in twigs and handing them off, this is the only one where I had both a decent wing spread plus some eye contact from both. I had gotten as low as I could to try to get the sky behind (not much choice).

I would appreciate any guidence how I might improve, either in postprocessing this one, or in general in catching these types of shots.

Full res shot if anyone wants to view is here:

http://www.captivephotons.com/Nature...77_dVVHW-O.jpg

[Kerry Perkins]

Linwood, very nice behavioral shot! The composition is excellent and you have two good head angles. I really like the dynamic poses of the birds and the well-controlled exposure. I don't know that I would change much about this one. I think it is a very good natural history image.

[John Chardine]

Hi Linwood- I am struck by how beautifully sharp this image is. The detail in the image is stunning. There is a hint of sharpening halo, e.g., around the crest and the birds right wing so maybe just bring back the sharpening a bit in these locations. You can do this in several ways- try duping the layer and sharpening the top layer to the current level, and the bottom reduce the sharpening until the halos disappear. Then just erase (soft brush) the problem areas in the top layer so the bottom layer shows through. Great that you have good head angles on both birds and good eye contact. On my computer I tried a bit tighter crop with some off the bottom and the left and I think it worked very well.

[Linwood Ferguson]

Thank you both. Sharpening - yes. I need to do more print, to see how they really come out, but now that I look more closely at 1:1 it does look over sharpened, I will work on that.

Crop - I was trying to keep the "virtual feet" of the female in the frame, I have heard that regularly (though it is not exactly obvious in this posture where they are). But I'll experiment a bit.

Thanks again.

[John Chardine]

Good point about the virtual feet Linwood. It is a good rule of thumb most of the time. I'm not sure it matters here that much with the bird concerned not being the main focus of the image. And I think that bird has her legs tucked up underneath anyway.