single photos Great Blue Heron Fishing with its Reflection

Found him fishing, and after a rather lengthy discussion, mostly my

profession that I would not eat him, he agreed to pose for me. I am aware

that my framing is a little off.

Actually, I find the composition very pleasing. Nice colors and great focus. I notice that you are having a similar problem that I am having when shooting birds. There is not enough detail in the feathers. I read an article that discusses focal length and shutter speed. You take your focal length and place it under one. Example: 300mm = 1/300 shutter speed. Ideally your shutter speed should not be any slower than 1/300 sec. There are trade offs though, I see you shot at 1600 ISO. This gave you a shutter speed of 1/90 sec. with an F/5.6. I am impressed with the lack of noise in the photo and I am sure that it may be a problem to increase the ISO any more. But, still you have a beautiful photo that you must be proud of.

Happy shooting,

Tracy

Thank you. The shutter speed was my bad; that was the best of my last sequence I shot, and I was out until far darker than I expected, and neglected to bring a tripod as a result. The noise is low because I used the non-commercial NeatImage, and then I went into GIMP and HF and used their respective features (the main features of GIMP and the retouching of Helicon Filter) to manually remove the remaining noise. Frankly, that is one of my best ever pictures (I am not a very good photographer (yet)). Once again, thank you.

Fantastic for hand held! Wish I could be as successful!

this is a real aesthetically pleasing shot. If I would change anything it would be as you suggest, the framing a bit, but not much. I would frame out the upper branches on the left side, and cut off the bottom about halfway between the bottom of the reflection of the heron and the bottom of the picture, leaving as much of the top and right hand side as possible. Just my opinion and not to take away from the serene scene you have portrayed here. Thanks for sharing.