Egret Reflection

[PJM]

It was a very bright sunny day and the water was quite still so I thought I would try and get a shot of this egret and his reflection.

Shot with:
NIkon D500, 200-500, f/5.6 lens @500 mm, f/6.3, 1/2500sec, ISO 100, -1 1/3 EV.
PP with Lightroom

I dropped the EV because I didn't want to blow out the egret. When I saw the result I noted the background was quite dark for a daylight photo. But I liked it and thought I would go with it. I cropped in closer on the egret (about 1.25x). Then I added an inverted radial filter around the egret and darkened the background a bit to highlight the egret a bit more.

Does it work?

 

[Jeff15]

Cool shot.....

 

[PJM]

Cool shot.....

Thanks, Jeff.

 

[zulu42]

Is your radial filter darkening the bird's neck? The nice white body turns to gray as you go up the neck. That's the only thing I notice since you mentioned the filter. If so, in LR you can edit your radial filter with a brush to remove any -EV from the bird.

 

[Space Face]

Yeah, when you compare the birds neck to the reflected neck it is a shade darker.

 

[PJM]

Is your radial filter darkening the bird's neck? The nice white body turns to gray as you go up the neck. That's the only thing I notice since you mentioned the filter. If so, in LR you can edit your radial filter with a brush to remove any -EV from the bird.

Yeah, when you compare the birds neck to the reflected neck it is a shade darker.

It probably is. I will look more closely at that.

 

[manaheim]

I would crop in a lot more... you have a lot of space in there that is not necessarily doing the image any favors, esp. where the exposure seems off.

It almost looks like you missed the focus a bit... or the aperture was so wide that the DOF was really shallow.... actually looking again I see you're at the extreme range of your lens, which is probably where the quality concerns are coming from. Zoom lenses generally do NOT work super well at their extreme ends... usually 1/3 in from either end is the extreme (as a general rule of thumb, but each lens has it's own characteristics... so I'd look it up)

The underexposure is also hurting this, imo... I know that's SUPER hard with a white bird on a dark background. A setting like this screams for shooting RAW and handling the exposure issues in post processing.

 

[PJM]

I would crop in a lot more... you have a lot of space in there that is not necessarily doing the image any favors, esp. where the exposure seems off.

It almost looks like you missed the focus a bit... or the aperture was so wide that the DOF was really shallow.... actually looking again I see you're at the extreme range of your lens, which is probably where the quality concerns are coming from. Zoom lenses generally do NOT work super well at their extreme ends... usually 1/3 in from either end is the extreme (as a general rule of thumb, but each lens has it's own characteristics... so I'd look it up)

The underexposure is also hurting this, imo... I know that's SUPER hard with a white bird on a dark background. A setting like this screams for shooting RAW and handling the exposure issues in post processing.

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. I will keep those in mind on future outings.