Juvenile BCNH

[P-A. Fortin]

Also taken at Lake Balboa, CA. One of my latest images of that day (hence the "low-side" lighting. The bird stayed in this position for over 20 minutes. At some point I was wondering if it was real. And it did look this mad all along. I guess he had a rough day.

Canon 60D, 100-400mm @ 360mm (really), f/5.6, ISO 640, 1/1000, no flash, manual

Added a bit of exposure in Lightroom. NR on the background and sharpening (that I am not satisfied with. But for whatever reason this is the least worse I've been able to do) in CS5. Exported to JPG from LR3 (that I am also not satisfied with). The original RAW image looks much better but for whatever reason I feel like this image looks like it was taken with my cellphone.

Okay, maybe not that bad. But there is alot I still need to figure out when it comes to post-processing.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

PA,

I attended a workshop last year and we had to photograph each other to see how it felt. I did not like it and this guys seems to feel the same way. There are several reasons that images can seem flat, usually related to light. In this case you mention the low light situation, this might have been an opportunity to use flash and highlight colors and make the image stronger.

There are many things you can do in post to enhance it. I am actually not big on a lot of post processing but do go through a regular workflow to get best results. In this case, maybe levels and/or curves for more contrast and bring out the mid tones (browns).

I might add canvas on the bottom, looks a bit tight on the feet. I like the picture it is different and the mad look gives the subject character. Remember, IMO it is a good thing to be unique and show birds in a different light, well done PA.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi P-A., sounds like a great opportunity and the birds there seem to be a bit tame. All the better for us! The framing feels tight to me, could have pulled back on the lens a bit to give the bird some space. I see a bluish cast to the shadows on the head and breast - could be fixed easily. To give the image more "punch", I would raise the "black" slider in LR. I would blur the bg at the top, as it seems a little busy. Overall, good capture and the post skills will come as you practice. I recommend reading all the posts in the "Tutorials and Educational Resources" forum if you haven't already.

[SteveYoung]

I'd agree with adding contrast. A shallow S-curve in Curves would really punch it up. You could also reduce the blue channel a bit while you're there. I'm still trying to get a good handle on sharpening myself but one helpful trick I learned recently is to make a sharpening layer, smart sharpen and then pull down the blending options and select 'luminosity'. That eliminates the color noise created by sharpening. I would also target the eye and give it a little boost in saturation and maybe kick up the vibrance slider a bit overall to bring out the muted colors in the rest of the bird. One other thing I noticed is that your ISO was really high in relation to your shutter speed and aperture. I think in this situation you could have used a much lower ISO and shutter even with the low light available since you said the heron was just standing still. It's much easier to sharpen with a low noise subject :) It's a good capture and a couple of tweaks in PS will make it look pretty great.