Mr Night Herron "Come at me bro!"

[Luis Gonzalez Jr]

Oh this guy is one of my best friends. Well, not this one in particular but this kind. I've always had pretty decent luck shooting these guys.
This was taken at the Rancho Park Duck Pond in Simi Valley, CA
Pentax K10D, 75-300mm @220mm, ISO-320, f/5.6, 1/1000 sec. Hand Held, AF-C, some Topaz DeNoise on the BG and a bit of sharpening on the subject.
As always, any C&C is welcomed!

[Joel Eade]

Luis,

You did well with sharpness and the exposure looks good as well even though the light appears pretty harsh.

To me, it's a little tight in the frame overall and I think you should try to darken the rocks in the BG. Nice image.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Luis,

Joel's advice is spot on, need room to breath (very tight on the feet) and regarding the light, what was the time of day. As the photographer you control the frame and decide what goes in the four corners. Seem like when ever I shoot down on a subject and show a busy ground often it brings many distracting elements into the image. Last week I saw a Robin (one of my favorite birds) hopping around and took several pictures they were all too busy and the subject seemed lost among the blades of grass, rocks and twigs. Some time it works if the habitat complements the subject, in this case a simpler environment would have made the image stronger.

This is a beautiful species and often hard to photograph, what a nice friend to have. There might be a few hot pixels but overall nice work with the exposure. Images like this need something to make them stand out - work on composition.
Notice the shadow under the eye, it appears the sun was on top of the subject and this often cause harsh light. The soft light in the morning and golden light of evening makes great pictures - remember you are shooting the light not just the subject. Feather detail and sharpening are well done, keep at it you are improving with every post. Show us more, I like your friend.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Luis, to make the composition cleaner I would crop from the right and eliminate some of the clutter. Leave him some space to walk into, but lose the leaves and other stuff on the right. The white area above the bill is blown out, as you can see in my repost. Remember that digital cameras get very aggressive with brightly lit white subjects. You need to think in terms of slightly underexposing in these conditions. For the techs you posted, I am not surprised at the overexposure, as I would expect to be shooting at a much higher shutter speed, like 1/3200. Blown highlights are impossible to recover, as there just isn't any detail at 255-255-255. You can use post processing to make the pixels lower in value, but then you get 245-245-245 which also has no detail. Another point to consider is the angle of the sun. Looks like it was high overhead, which leads to harsh shadows like the one under the eye. You are doing really well for just having taken up the challenge. Keep them coming!