Great Blue Heron

[jjeling]

Ok. Ill never be able to post all of my quality images on this site. Just wont happen. Im going to start with some of the images I am in question about. This is the first one. I was doing some smallmouth fishing in the the Maumee River when I made friends with him. He followed me around for about an hour, then I realized he was begging me for food. I ended up feeding him a few from about 5 feet away. Kind of nerve racking, he was almost as tall as me, and when he speared the fish with his beak I made sure to stay clear. It was cool. Enough with the story, here is the image.

[Ben H]

Ok, for me I would mention a few things. The river is not level, and while sometimes this can artistically work, here I think it's too distracting. Secondly, the background has quite a bit of detail and distracts from the main image. A wider aperture here would have helped isolate the bird more, and blur the background.

Lastly, I find the framing here a bit awkward - the birds tail is too close the the image edge, and it feels like the framing was chosen to fit the whole bird in, without much efert to "sit" the subject into a larger picture + landscape framework. In short, the bird is not isolated enough to be the only subject, and yet the frame isn't wide enough to put the bird in context with it's surroundings.

Magnificent creature, though...

[Marko]

These are so hard to do well but this is a really good attempt IMO.

The green grass is lovely as the background for the heron's head so it may have been better to have gone just a wee but higher and have cropped out the trees with their very dark shadows.
The heron's eye could be a wee bit sharper as well.
The white rocks on the right side could be burned in 10%.
I think I would also clone or crop out the water/rocks on the right foreground edge.

I shot some flamingos last month so i can attest to just how hard it is to get amazing shots of larger birds. Hope that helps and wasn't too harsh,

Marko

[jjeling]

Thanks guys. Yeah, I was reading some of the other threads on the forum. This image has always been a personal favorite but never made it into the professional favorite. I did my homework :D. Im not the greatest at PP, usually try to take the best picture so PP isnt necessary(who doesnt though). Thanks for the input. Ill give it a shot.