Took this yesterday afternoon at the edge of Cayuga lake where I found this green heron hunting. I liked how the bill pierced the fish and the spot of blood there. I had a bit of a difficulty with NR, trying to effectively remove noise without making bird look too silky. There was a lot of noise, as I had to shoot on high ISO for the 7D given the lack of light in upstate NY these days. If there were more light, I would have gone for greater DOF, but maybe shot ok as it is as I wanted to draw most attention to the face and prey. Hope it's sharp enough.
Darkened the BG some and the log. Is it still too bright?
This is at least a 60% crop. Did some selective sharpening.
Thanks for looking. Critiques and comments always greatly welcome and appreciated. I learn something valuable with each and every post!
I quite like the shallow DOF here Melissa - with the primal focus where the action is .
Details look good too...surprised you view 640 as 'high ISO' for the 7D...I used to comfortably push mine to 1600 in poor conditions .
I think it could do with some more darkening overall to punch details.
What a great pose. I love the drop of blood and the direct gaze. Re; NR. Do you have CS4 or 5? I use the magnetic lasso to outline the bird (can be very tedious), then invert the selection then go to filter and do NR at 8 or 9 with 0% detail. This way, you can avoid reducing the detail in the bird. Sometimes I will selectively do NR on the bird as well but only at 2 with 15% detail.
I find the crop a bit tight and would love to see more room all around,
Gail
Thanks for the comments. I'm trying a repost with more room around per your suggestion, Gail. And added some points to the blacks in Selective Color to darken just a bit, Morkel.
Gail, I have CS4. I will try your suggestion on the NR, thanks so much for your explanation. I use Noiseware Pro, after doing a select with the Magnetic Lasso as you say, and then choosing Inverse. But the bird really needed some too here, so I did NR on it too, separately, and then backed off a bit so it didn't look too smooth. But I will definitely try your method and see it gives better results!
Green Heron Catch
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