While in Tortuguero, we happened upon this Tiger Heron at the end of a full day of photography. Little did I know that my flash was starting to die. I took a series of photos of this beautiful bird from our boat. This one was overexposed by 1.5 stops (not entirely sure why). I decided to attempt a recovery because the bird was nicely focused and had good eye contact. The finished product was quite amazing to me; normally I throw away photos as poorly exposed as this one was. No longer. Lightroom did a great job for this picture. I thought about cloning out the color in the upper right, but I think it compliments the bird and gives some depth to the otherwise dark BG.
Canon 1D Mark III, 500mm + 1.4x, f/7.1, 1/200, ISO 800, flash, monopod
I've for sure never seen one of these before. Leaving the patch of color is a good idea, I just wish there were more of it in the background. Maybe two conversions would work for this shot. Convert the raw file again with the background showing a bit more of the OOF elements then merge the two in photoshop after.
There wasn't a lot of detail in the BG because this was shot under the rain forest canopy. I kind of like the dark BG in this photo; it gives the heron some 3 dimensionality.
For anyone who's interested, here is a JPG of the original RAW file. The whites appear blown, but I was able to recover essentially all white detail in Lightroom.
Wonderful portrait of this tiger heron Doug. We saw these while in the Pantanal, Brazil last summer and they are magnificent birds.. Thanks for sharing this with us and I too like the more saturated version.
Bare-Throated Tiger Heron
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