This is in contrast to the lovely Black-crowned Night Heron that Dan Walters put up a while ago. A dirty bird on the mud flat at the shrimp ponds on Oahu. Caught him Friday after a miserable day on the north shore looking for non-existent sea birds.
Nikon D7000, 200-400mm f/4, 1.7x, tripod from the bank above, C&C welcome and appreciated
f/8, 1/500, ISO 450, distance 15 m
You have captured a lot of detail. Without your permission I just applied touch of sharpening in LAB mode and you can see the difference. But I am just a starter to birding and others will definitely offer better tips. Please remove the pic if you don't approve the edit.
Hi Ron,
I like the walking pose and the raised leg. I find Shreeni's post too oversharpened but agree something in between would look great. Might brighten the picture a bit.The dried out mud flats are a unique surface.
Gail
I agree something between the two would work best. I love the cracked mud surface texture. I'd eliminate the OOF white spots near the top third of the image. Did you also take any with a lower angle?
I agree too, lower angle a tad more sharpening on the subject and boost the exposure a tad as well. Nice BG I once photographed avocet's in a very similar surface.
Thanks for the look and the advice. I do feel the repost is over the top, and that the OP is soft. My problem is with taking a 4928 x 3264 sharp image, and modifying it for 1024x660 or so, under 200k. I'm applying Artie's suggested prep, but getting mixed results. I need to spend some time on the web prep piece. Here's another try, with considerably more small image sharpening. It definitely presents sharper, but appears a little harsh to me.
Good detail, pose and the dirty feathers and mud flat surface pattern give it a unique look. Nicely framed & captured, Ron, and your repost is a pretty good solution.
Thanks Brendan. I think I've decided that I'm not going to get away with Artie's fully automated Action for preparing the images. But if I intervene on the sharpening and exporting steps, maybe I can get them more consistently right.
Incidentally, looking at this post on a crappy, uncalibrated monitor at work, Shreeni's repost doesn't look outrageous at all, so Shreeni, I owe you an apology. That's one of the things I'm beginning to hate about putting up images for Web -- I have no idea how they'll look to anyone else. But I really appreciate the comments and suggestions.