green heron

Comments are welcome. . . thanks.

Really beautiful work, Donna!

Very good, Donna. Regards.

Great capture Donna. The lighting and pose are excellent. I ran your image through noise reduction, upped the saturation a bit and sharpened some more. I hope you like my version as well, I was trying to give it more pop. Outstanding shot all around. Regards.

Donna, this is a great shot with a very pleasing and effective composition and the pose and stare of the heron is excellent.

 

However, the lack of clarity and sharpness is holding it back for me at least. I really like Leroy's processing -- but the sharpening might be a little too obvious (I'm sure a much better result could be obtained by working with the original file).

 

I'd give this either 6/5 or 5/6 now and something like 6.5/7 for a result like what Leroy worked up (but more subtly handled).

Thanks everyone for your kind and helpful comments. Leroy and Lois, I really like the reworked version. . . I can easily handle the increased saturation and sharpness, but the digital noise is a challenge for me. Will I be able to reduce the noise in CS3 or do I have to go to a plug-in such as noise ninja or neat image? . . . .Donna

I like the dark background you are getting with your latest posts, Donna. Really makes the birds stand out.

I used noise ninja for my edit but you should be able to reduce the noise in Photoshop as well. Another trick is to sharpen on a new layer with an edge mask so that the smooth areas like the background don't get sharpened.

Wow great capture! This bird has algae on his feet, he must really like the water. What was he looking at? Very nice photo indeed!