Great Egret head portrait

[Chris Brennan]

I was out at the Forsythe NWR in New Jersey on Sunday, testing my new 500mm, and made this portrait of a Great Egret. 7D, 500mm @ f7.1, 1/2000, ISO 400. Post-processing involved applying Nik Dfine NR, some minor Curves work as well as using the Shadow/Highlights to try and tone down the whites but not sure if I did enough.... or too much! I also added a very, very small amount of sharpening as I was really very pleased with the feather details in the original image.

I look forward to your comments.

[Ian Cassell]

Nice, Chris, and congrats on the new 500! I think a bit of head turn towards you would have improved it. I think the whites are still a bit hot, but you might be able to bring them down some with the exposure slider.

I can't wait to get back to Forsythe this summer (I own a place near to the Brigantine division and will be there in July in time to be eaten by the greenhead flies).

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Chris, good points made by Ian above. This is a very difficult lighting situation for white birds but you did a good job of containing the whites. Strong direct sun like this makes the details more difficult to capture, partly because of the scatter of light by the feathers, which makes local contrast go very low. You got good detail though in spite of that. The angle of the light is not helping you here, and it would have been an easier shot if you had been to the right a little so the sun was behind you. I like the nice s-curve of the neck but the head turned away detracts a bit and also gave you that shadow under the eye, but the head turn you needed would have made that even worse, so best to get the light angle working for you! I think you could even add a touch more sharpening to this one. Good shooting, keep them coming!

[John Chardine]

The image is nice and sharp. You will love the results from the 500 Chris, and they will get better as you get used to the lens. I agree with Ian on the head angle- the image would have much more impact if the head were turned CW a little towards you rather than away. It's too bad that beautiful green area between the bill and the eye is in shadow. I tried dodging this area with the dodge tool in Photoshop to lighten up and it worked well. Also lightened the area around the eye.

[Chris Brennan]

... I can't wait to get back to Forsythe this summer (I own a place near to the Brigantine division and will be there in July in time to be eaten by the greenhead flies).

Thanks for your comments, Ian! I was, of course, thrilled to get the shot but knew the whites might cause fits... something else to work on for the future.

FYI, I've now been down to Forsythe about 5 times since the beginning of April, and have noticed that there are a lot of wasps. I hope this doesn't mean the greenheads will be out early... probably just waiting for you with their little knives and forks !

[Chris Brennan]

The image is nice and sharp. You will love the results from the 500 Chris, and they will get better as you get used to the lens. I agree with Ian on the head angle- the image would have much more impact if the head were turned CW a little towards you rather than away. It's too bad that beautiful green area between the bill and the eye is in shadow. I tried dodging this area with the dodge tool in Photoshop to lighten up and it worked well. Also lightened the area around the eye.

Thanks to you and Kerry for your comments! I've recently discovered the benefits of using the dodge tool to bring up eyes and other facial features but I purposefully didn't do much pp to this image because I wanted to get the feedback from BPN members to see if I would have been on the right track.