The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This is a photo from our local ponds of a Black-crowned Night Heron and its reflection. We get a lot of black-crowned and yellow-crowned along with a lot of great blues in our ponds.
Specific Feedback
I liked the almost monochrome look of this image and the strong reflections throughout.
Technical Details
Canon R5, f11, 1/1600 sec, iso 4000, 100-500 lens at 500 mm.
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
This is a good look at one of these nocturnal herons. You may want to rotate it a nudge CCW and maybe recrop to minimize the diagonal green stem. It does catch my eye. Other than that, a nice catch with excellent exposure and sharpness…Jim
Excellent, Ed. I like the monochrome look, but to my eye, the heron was getting a little lost in the composition and the reeds above weren’t as interesting as their reflections. I took the liberty of downloading it and doing some work in PS.
Steps:
Straightened based on a vertical line between the tip of the beak and it’s reflection (it was very minor), cropped quite a bit tighter, retaining more of the water and less of the reeds. Removed a couple of errant reeds that were crossing the two upper corners and were distracting. Selected the bird and gave it a little micro-contrast boost using an old Topaz plugin called Detail 3 (there’s still a detail tab in Topaz Studio 2 that will do the same thing-I’m just used to using the old one and I can go directly there instead of having to go through a couple of screens first). Saved a copy.
@Jim_Zablotny and @Dennis_Plank, thank you so much for your insights and help on this one. Dennis, your edits make all the difference in the world. The heron stands out nicely, I haven’t lost anything in the upper reeds, and it is a lot neater overall. Thank you especially for the steps you used. I think I can actually do that with the software I have.
Hi Ed, I like this with the uniform color tones of the reeds and birds spilling down to the wavy reflection. The red eye stands out in a subtle way from the rest of the image. Repost looks really good. Nice capture.
