Great Blue Heron

[Joel Eade]

1D3
300mm 2.8L I + 1.4 TCII
Hand held from a boat
iso 1000
1/1250
f/8
manual mode

[John Chardine]

Hi Joel- Great "determined" look in the bird's eye. Nice sharpness and wing angle. Love the feet bringing up the rear. I think it might have been better to blur the BG a bit more with a wider aperture.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Joel,

Greetings. Nice flight shot... really like the feather detail. Perhaps, a bit over sharpened for my taste. Was the bg sharpened too? Might try some selective blurring on the bg. Also like the color contrast.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Joel Eade]

Thanks for looking and commenting....I did not sharpen the BG but I think the problem is two-fold......the BG is close to the bird and it is rather "busy".

I could certainly apply a blur to it or possibly a reverse S curve to reduce contrast.

[Joel Eade]

Repost with BG blurred 1.3 pixels and contrast reduced with curves adjustment layer

[Chris Korman]

Pane #5 is much stronger than Pane #1 as the background was distracting the main subject, especially the bright sand region. I might go in and make more selective masking of the blur as there is some blur spilling over into the bird.