Mr. Heron

Gallery: AvianPosted December 22, 2017134 views8 comments

This was taken out in a coastal marsh during our Oregon trip last year. This character hung out in a culvert pipe and popped out occasionally to fish. I cropped the image about 50% to get a head portrait. I removed some bright yellow reeds in the BG, adjusted midtone contrast, and adjusted brightness & contrast.K5 IIs 300 mm f4 (1/500 sec at f7.1, Iso 640).........................Jim

Comments

8 comments

Comment posted by Jim Hansen on December 22, 2017 at 1:19 PM

Very nice image Jim. I really like the pose this bird gave you for this portrait. Love the even light and great details on this GBH. His beak looks like it is well worn and experienced. Background, particularly on the right, is only a little bit distracting.

Registered on May 5, 2011, 161 Posts, 908 Comments

Comment posted by Allen Brooks on December 22, 2017 at 1:19 PM

Very nice portrait shot with great detail throughout the heron.

Registered on July 27, 2011, 262 Posts, 2597 Comments

Comment posted by David Schoen on December 22, 2017 at 2:24 PM

Good color and detail on this portrait of the Great Blue Heron. I like to head turn.

Registered on November 6, 2006, 1213 Posts, 4587 Comments

Comment posted by Philip Hodgkins on December 22, 2017 at 5:08 PM

Really nice portrait of the GBH. Purely subjective—I would back off the sharpening just a bit and flatten out the midtones. Maybe brighten the eye. I tried the following:

Gaussian blur 0.2 pixels
Brighten midtones 25%
Brighten eye 35% (after 2)

On my monitors, admittedly a week out of calibration, the image looked just a little chunky and contrasty. You may well feel differently since you adjusted all those aspects, but that is my take based on what I can see on both my monitors.

Registered on July 24, 2006, 2741 Posts, 12349 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on December 22, 2017 at 5:42 PM

Excellent, Jim. I really like the subtle lighting and the pose. To my eye, there seems to be quite a bit of noise in the water.

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by Nate Chappell on December 22, 2017 at 8:46 PM

Beautiful detail in the head and neck Jim. I am seeing some noise in the bg that I would try to reduce. For some reason and I can't really put my finger on it, it feels to me like it needs a bit of ccw rotation. devil

Registered on February 1, 2006, 1158 Posts, 19528 Comments

Comment posted by Barbara Graham on December 22, 2017 at 10:40 PM

I agree with Phil that I might try a tiny bit less sharpening, though I realize that sometimes wet wading birds look extremely detailed just as they are, so I don't know how much sharpening you actually did. I love the water drops on the body.

Registered on July 27, 2010, 1310 Posts, 5035 Comments

Comment posted by Jim Zablotny on December 23, 2017 at 10:13 AM

Thank you for the comments and critiques. I will rework this image in a few days and repost it. Normally, I use Tony Kuyper's sharpening and resizing plugins with very little changes needed to the sharpening layers. The Pentax 300 mm f4 is an excellent lens known for its sharpness. So my bad and I should be able to get the sharpness tweaked down. I will also examine the raw image and see if it needs a slight CCW rotation to keep the beak level. Merry Christmas................Jim

Registered on January 17, 2004, 705 Posts, 3594 Comments