Grey Heron

[Anubis]

Hi,

I took this shot of a Grey Heron on Monday.

Nikon D70s, hand held Sigma 500mm, ISO200. I tweaked the exposure down when converting from RAW as there where a few highlights, now I think I've darkened it down too much though.

C&C welcome and thanks for looking!

 

[Garbz]

It's over sharpened and haloing slightly. Other than that it looks good.

 

[dEARlEADER]

To me is doesn't look like there is enough sharpness in the face/eyes/head of this shot... but could be my monitor or the compression...

 

[uplander]

First of all...Nice shot. Most people don't have a clue what it takes to get a shot like this. There is no luxary of time, most of the time handheld or a monopod is the only way to get the capture. A lot of things have to fall in place to get a shot like this.

Okay on to the critique. Like Garbz said it is oversharpened ( I am often a victum of this myself if I don't back away during editing)
I am still learning but i think if you devise a good workflow your PP will benifit.

Start with cropping first. then do levels this will bring dark underexposed photos right up there. The I like to go to saturation and boost it a bit. I tweak the hue abit but very rarely. The last thing I do is go to unsharp mask. By now I rally have to back away a bit because I have been looking at this photo for quite a bit and have a tendency to push it to much.
Hope I helped.

 

[uplander]

Hi,

I took this shot of a Grey Heron on Monday.

Nikon D70s, hand held Sigma 500mm, ISO200. I tweaked the exposure down when converting from RAW as there where a few highlights, now I think I've darkened it down too much though.

C&C welcome and thanks for looking!

I took your photo and had a go with editing it and hers what I ended up with for a quick edit

 

[Anubis]

That is definitely brighter, which was truer to the day I was shooting, but it looks over saturated to me. I see where you are going through

Converting it from RAW I reduced the exposure, changed the white balance and applied unsharp mask then cropped it. Generally I don't mess with the hue or saturation.

I think if i could get it to a point between both our versions I'd have it spot on.

Thanks for taking the time to edit it!

 

[Anubis]

To me is doesn't look like there is enough sharpness in the face/eyes/head of this shot... but could be my monitor or the compression...

It is not your monitor, this was the sharpest of the few shots I fired off when it was in this pose, but it didn't stand up well to the cropping.

I'm going to try a smaller aperture next time to try and keep more area in focus.