heron

once again photo taken in my favorite marsh in green island iowa

f/8 iso 800 focal length 500mm

canon xsi tamron 200-500mm

Wally,
After many years of photographing these birds there are a few things you can do to help get photograph herons.
1) Lots of times auto metering is fooled by their white features on their faces I usually shoot manually, metering the medium gray feathers or neck.
2) Try not to cut off the feet. I've don the same thing shooting a 500mm lens---sometimes you just have too much focal length!!
3) Did you polarize? Might have taken the sheen off the plants and water.

You have to love these guys..... I don't see as many here in Oregon as in Ohio... just one of the things I miss.
JG

Wally
I think the color is off a bit and a wider crop would help.

Wally - I also think that the color is way off. And, seeing this image then makes me think that it would have been easier to ID your bird the other day if the colors had been better - and, it still sounds like the other bird is a redstart...

Tim!

I haven't been lucky enough yet to get a decent shot of a Heron, so you're doing better than I am, Wally. You might try to use Selective Color to get rid of the magenta cast.

Nice composition, "cutting off" the legs doesn't bother me. I know enough of heron's to mentally fill in the rest. I agree that there's some fairly serious color issues taking place here. It also looks like the contrast was cranked up pretty high. Are you shooting RAW or jpeg? Many of these issues could easily remedied during the RAW conversion process if so desired. A bit less depth of field may have worked well here too...something to consider. Regards!

here is that same photo with sharpening and auto color only