Care to join me for dinner?

[Judy Howle]

I made this in late afternoon last summer. It was a bit unsharp because I was shooting handheld and too excited about what I was capturing, so I chose to process it with a little diffused glow. I first used Topaz Clean, then Nik Glamour Glow and then Magic Bullet Photo Looks Green Pearl diffused preset erased from all but the grass as I liked the effect on the grass in toning down the yellow and the diffused glow. I also did some cleanup cloning and dodging, in addition to shadow/highlights to even out the exposure.

[Indranil Sircar]

That is a nice capture, Judy! I like your processing and use of glamour glow. The effect on the grass is beautiful. I probably would have preferred a slightly better head angle or eye contact. But the grass and the defused water really stands out. TFS

[Judy Howle]

Thanks Indranil!

[Mark Fuge]

Nice image and application, Judy.

Like the BG effect and the capture.

[denise ippolito]

Judy, Nice job with the softness. I like the colors and the comp. A slightly better HA would have been nice but you captured the eye and open bill with the snack beautifully!

[Judy Howle]

Thanks Mark and Denise! Yep, sometimes they just don't cooperate on the HA

[Maureen Allen]

Nice one, Judy! Love the effect on the grass, particularly.

[Dennis Bishop]

This is a great capture, and it's nicely composed. My personal feeling is that it's nice to get a good angle but even nicer to get a mouse in the beak. Especially when I've only seen these guys feeding in the water. I like the colors, too. Because of the diagonals (beak/head and hillside), I would have flipped the image horizontally so they're pointing towards the heron instead of out of the scene.

[Judy Howle]

Thanks Maureen! I like the look of the grass from the Topaz Clean filter and then the diffused look from Nik and Photo Looks really added a shimmer to it.

[Judy Howle]

This is a great capture, and it's nicely composed. My personal feeling is that it's nice to get a good angle but even nicer to get a mouse in the beak. Especially when I've only seen these guys feeding in the water. I like the colors, too. Because of the diagonals (beak/head and hillside), I would have flipped the image horizontally so they're pointing towards the heron instead of out of the scene.

Thanks Dennis! I've never seen one catch a mouse or any critter on land although I've seen one with a crawfish and one with a snake about 3 ft. long captured at the edge of a big lake.

I'm not sure what you meant by flipping the image. Maybe you meant flip the mouse? At any rate, I'm not up to that tonight!

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . I'm not sure what you meant by flipping the image. . .

Here's what I was thinking of. And why.

As the photo was probably taken, there's a nice lead-in, and the eye follows the curve of the back into the image. But then, the beak and the hillside lead the eye out of the image. If the image is flipped horizontally, however, the hillside leads the eye right to the important part of the image. From there, the eye follows the beak to the curves of the head and back towards the bottom right corner (following the legs). From there, it hopefully stays in the image, going back to -- probably -- the mouse, again.