Escapee (GBH in flight)

Suggestions/comments appreciated; thanks

Hi Dieter, composition is good as with most of your picture's, looks pretty good as a small picture but when viewed larger it looks like you have used something like noise ninja to remove noise,which I guess would be dew to a higher ISO speed to get your shutter speeds up to capture sharpness and stop motion, I have tryed removing the noise for this reason myself but as with your photograph found the same problem which is a loss of detail especially around the neck area in this photo, I know that if the Herons are like our one's in New Zealand they are very fast to react when they spot you and they have great eyesight.Simply I would not mind a little noise in the picture if it ment more detail.

Regards

David

P.S.Please let me know if I am way off track as I am just commenting on what appears to me.

Hi Dieter

 

Your capture is absolutely fantastic. The motif here has occupied a very fair proportion of the frame with wings elegantly spread diagonally. It's "Dieter-shaefer" sharp (don't look it up in dictionary)with the background nicely thrown out of focus. The contrast between the tonal value of the figure and the background has produced a nice focus on the subject. I am more a landscaper than a wild life photographer, so to see how you adeptly place your subject in the frame

( knowing that the subject has really been on the move) always keeps me in the awe of how fast and accurate you go to work with that Nikon of yours. truly inspiring.

David, as shown under DETAILS, ISO was 200 and thus not high at all. I have used Neat Image very carefully to clean out the image but it has not resulted in a loss of detail in the neck area; I have compared to the original and the neck is that smooth in the original as well. You may want to check out watching out II which is the same heron just before it took flight. You can see there that the feathers around the neck are amazingly smooth; this is in fact one reason why it is so hard to focus on a GBH; the angles and the smooth feathers throw the AF off more often than not. Regards, Dieter PS: I choose to ignore the numerical ratings since everybody makes up their own set of rules anyway but in your case would find it interesting to hear the argument for the 4 in aesthetics.

 

Arash, I always enjoy reading your comments either received by me or given to others. I wish there were more artists like you on PN who take the time to comment on photos rather than squeezing their opinion into two numbers. A shot like this one requires a good deal of luck; experience just helps to shorten reaction time while keeping the excitement at bay. The image is almost full size, I cropped off just a small sliver behind the bird, maybe 10%. More often than not, parts of the bird will be outside the frame; in particular when using a prime lens and being that close. Composition then becomes a matter of one's position with respect to the bird's flight path and is mostly in the hands of "Lady Luck". With a zoom lens one can control a bit better by leaving more space around the bird for a later crop; of course, this costs detail on the bird itself. Had this heron turned right instead of left from its perch, I would have gotten yet another "tailfeather" shot. Regards, Dieter

I like to argue your referring to the success here in merely being in the hands of the ladyluck by referring you to Louis Pasteur famous quotation ' Chance favors the prepared mind'. It's not entirely the play of the providence that you capture these awe-inspiring shots. You have done your research, you know where to visit and how to wait, how to hold your camera, waht to wait for, and how to react to the imminent or snappy situations. 10% totally bad luck out of control with nobody able to save the day, yes, but that is still something to argue about.

Beautiful Dieter, One of your best! no nits from me. Regards, B. IMHO it's a 7/7 (damn rating system)ps you could use a little room right & bottom for the matting, cause this ones a hanger!

Sorry Dieter if I gave a 4 it certainly was not meant to be and tell that bird to grow some detail in its neck would you please.

First, I would have to agree with Arash's input about luck. If you don't know what are you doing, no luck will bring you this kind of photo. Then, the photo itself is so dynamic with that motion blur in the wings. Background that you couldn't choose, worked really good with you this time too. However, I don't like one thing. It is white line along the borders of the legs and partially the body. It happened I think, by sharpening. I believe that this shot didn't need much sharpening, and even if it was a little soft, you didn't need to be this aggressive on the whole thing. I said before that sharpening may be a personal reference, and someone can like it this way better, so if you prefer it this way, that's than your choice.

P.S. I still can't give you 7 (too early).

Samir, I agree about the sharpening; I hadn't processed this shot applying my newly acquired knowledge and processing technique. I pretty much need to take a break and re-process a lot if not all of my shots. I may even have to reconsider the camera settings (although there is no indication of over-sharpening in the original); maybe this is a good time to switch to RAW all the way. When I started with digital photography (which isn't all that long ago), I had no idea on what processing was necessary and how to handle it. Thanks to comments like yours and the experience sharing of other PN members, I think I have a much better idea now.

I can't say whether this kind of sharpening is my personal preference or not; I simply haven't reached the level of control I want and the level of sophistication with the tools at hand to achieve it. I'll keep working at it. BTW, you can see the original background of this shot (here); Leroy Laverman was so kind to help me out with his better PS skills. Something else I need to work on... Regards, Dieter PS: I wasn't saying getting this kind of shot is merely luck.

Very good background manipulation work. Now, when you said that, I found a little error in the upper left corner. Except this, no way to tell that it was changed. And RAW is the way. It could slow you down a little bit, but everything else is huge advantage. I read somewhere, and I completely agree, that RAW is like have the opportunity to see and work with unprocessed film, only much better.

Good eye, I missed that while I was working on the background. I've got a small monitor that I was working on and cloned off the edge of the photo. That's an easy fix though.

Really beautiful, Dieter! Best regards, Ruud.

Outside of the cropping tightness and little focus softness on the head, this is a terrific shot. And given that you had your large lens and a slow shutter speed, this turned out to be a magnificent image.

Dieter, what a wonderful post this is, not to mention your beautifully captured majestic image. While I can appreciate the vote of confidence by all who said these types of shots are not luck, I agree with you, they are! Not from a technical perspective (that goes without saying), but from one of capture. With moving subjects at this distance and focal length, hitting the right focus point to keep at least a portion of the body in focus, while keeping the face/eye sharp comes down to your focus point, f stop, direction/speed the bird travels, the direction of light (if it is sunny) and the fps that can be fired before the bird goes out of frame. To me, this is all about luck/timing; whatever you want to call a situation where we are not in control, nature is! That is why I so very much appreciate your efforts here. Congrats! BTW, did you really capture this at f/13 --- remarkable! If you were shooting at say f/8 and your focus point happened to hit the top of the left wing (as the bird flew by), I think the wing, neck and face all would have been sharp at this f stop and with the increased shutter speed.