Great Blue Heron at Bunche Beach Preserve

[Bob Pelkey]

Moderately cropped, tripod, Camera Raw: fill light 3, blacks 8, brightness +73, contrast +33, clarity +15, sharpening 68, radius 1.0, detail 25, masking 0, NR Luminance 25, lum. detail 50, lum. contrast 0, color 25, color detail 50, filter: smart sharpen 72%, radius .3, unsharp mask 68%, .3 pixels, threshold 4 levels, slight CCW rotation to make the image appear level although it was beforehand.

Didn't expect to have so much fun on a gloomy heavily overcast morning. I wasn't particularly interested in this heron until it started flying in my direction. Have had enough practice to be responsive to get what I believe near correct exposure compensation in this case. There is drizzle in the frame with the largest water droplets from the bird itself as it approached me. I was tempted to do a heavy dose of noise reduction on the background. There is no additional canvas on the left of the frame to work with. The above workflow was done in about three minutes.

Great Blue Heron at Bunche Beach Preserve
Fort Myers, Florida USA

Full EXIF Info
Date/Time	31-Aug-2011 10:10:24
Make	Canon
Model	Canon EOS-1D Mark III
Flash Used	No
Focal Length	840 mm
Exposure Time	1/1000 sec
Aperture	f/5.6
ISO Equivalent	800
Exposure Bias	-1
White Balance
Metering Mode	matrix (5)
JPEG Quality
Exposure Program	aperture priority (3)
Focus Distance	56.7 m

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

I like the flight pose here and the nice sharp face but wonder what are all those spots? Are those spots marks on the sensor? or bugs? I find the crop comfortable to me.

[Sinh Nhut Nguyen]

I really like the flight pose, you really nailed the focus on the head, seems like he's going to flight right out of my screen

Nate