Great Blue Heron coming in for a landing

[Roger Clark]

Canon 1D Mark IV, 500 mm f/4 L IS lens at f/5.6, ISO 200 1/2000 second exposure, manual exposure, on a CF tripod with Wimberly head.. Crop to 11 megapixels. Florida. Wild and free, no calls, no bait.

Roger

[gail bisson]

Very nice Roger! Love the wingspread and diagonal line created by the wings. Like the wispy head feather trailing in the wind. i would get rid of round specular blob above bird's right side secondary feathers. Nice light as well,
Gail

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Gorgeous landing pose with great light and detail on the wings.

[Dan Brown]

Very nice, Roger! Great field crafting, with no bird seed to attract him!

[Jack Breakfast]

Ha! Wild and free, no calls, no bait! That's the only way I'd ever dream of taking pictures, but if I were going to bait a heron I'd throw fish at him. At my local pond we only have juveniles. They yank out catfish (!) and also the released goldfish that grow big! Neither here nor there, sorry. Anyhow: great shot! Nice pose, light, color!

[Paul Lagasi]

I love how you got this image Au Naturale....nice pose, composition ...tfs

[arash_hazeghi]

very nice, I like the dynamic pose and nice light good details. It's a bit tight in the frame, time for adding some canvas. I also see some artifacts above the left wing primaries.

[Ryan Schain]

I love the background and wing position. I'd add some canvas all around, and sharpen it more (especially the head).

[Troy Lim]

Nice landing shot, agree on it being a bit tight.

[Enrique Patino]

I like it as presented. I might consider sharpening it a bit more.

[Roger Clark]

Thanks all.
Regarding sharpening, you guys must have low MTF monitors. In my monitor, I pushed the unsharp mask the to point were I can just barely see ringing artifacts as BPN folks seem to like more "sharpening" than I like. In Enrique's repost, the ringing artifacts are too much for me. My original is quite sharp and I sharpened with Richardson-Lucy image deconvolution.

Arash, I'm not sure what artifacts you are talking about. Do you mean our left or the bird's left? If you mean the bird's left wing, those are out-of-focus trees, and I think that is what Gail was mentioning. I think that area should be reduced in intensity to de-emphasize it.

Interesting comments on the needs more space. I like it tight as it keeps the bird larger to see the details.

Roger

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Roger, excellent incoming angle and wing spread. nice DOF coverage to cover the legs. you also got a nice head position with the crest up. Personally, I wouldn't mind a bit more space.

[Robert Holguin]

Real nice shot. Love the wide spread wings, great head angle, very nice background, and I also agree on a bit more room.
Well done.

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks all.

Arash, I'm not sure what artifacts you are talking about. Do you mean our left or the bird's left? If you mean the bird's left wing, those are out-of-focus trees, and I think that is what Gail was mentioning. I think that area should be reduced in intensity to de-emphasize it.


Roger

bird's left, should be easy to smoothen with some NR.