Great Egret - Portrait

[Peter Seidel]

Shot with Nikon D300s, and Nikon 300mm (f/4). Cropped from horizontal. There is some room below but much more side-to-side. I thought a tighter crop was a little better. In PP I mainly tried to preserve the white detail. The dark blue background is water, not sky. I could lighten it a bit if necessary, but that color of blue is pretty accurate. If you tilt your screen a bit you can also see a couple of bright lines across the bird's body - reflections off the water. I didn't try to eliminate those.

f/6.3, 1/1000 sec., ISO 200. Pattern metering.

Comments welcome.

Pete

[Grace Scalzo]

To comment on your prelude....the color of the water is beautiful and I would not eliminate the reflections of it on the bird's body. Whites do look very nice and your image is wonderfully sharp. I'm not a total fan of the looking away from us, but I suspect he was focused on a fish, so it doesn't bother me all that much. Details are great. Did you clone a bit of his feathers away near the bottom? Tips Look a bit smudgy.

[jack williamson]

Very good quality, the whites look excellent and the bg works very well for me.

Jack

[Peter Seidel]

To comment on your prelude....the color of the water is beautiful and I would not eliminate the reflections of it on the bird's body. Whites do look very nice and your image is wonderfully sharp. I'm not a total fan of the looking away from us, but I suspect he was focused on a fish, so it doesn't bother me all that much. Details are great. Did you clone a bit of his feathers away near the bottom? Tips Look a bit smudgy.

Hi Grace,

Thanks. I agree, would have been nice to have the face looking more at me, but I'm ok with it. You have a good eye - I did clone out the feathers at the bottom. Probably need to re-work that. For some reason I just didn't like the look of those feathers going all the way to the bottom.

Appreciate the comments.

Pete

[Daniel Cadieux]

Good whites on this Snowy Egret, and I too like the water colour and reflecting streaks on the body (but I would tone down the brightest one). Sharp. HA could be better as mentioned...IMO it would have made for a stronger image no matter if he's looking at prey or not in this case. I would also add that bit of room at bottom that you still have.

[Peter Seidel]

Very good quality, the whites look excellent and the bg works very well for me.

Jack

Thanks Jack. If I re-visit this one I don't think I'll change colors/tones, perhaps just some cropping, plus cleaning up the cloning out of some feathers at the bottom. I also like the deep blue from the water in contrast to the white feathers. For reference, I believe the shot was taken @ 4:30 in the afternoon, setting sun off my right shoulder.

Pete