I love the attitude of these small Egrets. They are stoic in the cold, peripatetic in their foraging, athletes in flight and territorial wherever they are. This was on a gray cold day (well, relatively cold for SE Georgia), humid and cheerless. The little guy was toughing it out.
The whites look fine and there’s no way you’re going to tame that background, so I’d leave it. It fits your intended mood nicely in any case. The white balance seems a bit warm for your intended mood, you might want to try it a little cooler.
Speaking of mood, someone had an image at our local camera club meeting the other day that they’d used NIK’s “graduated fog” filter on. It’s in the “color efex” plugin and it was very effective at creating mood in her image.
Nice repost, Phil. I hadn’t particularly intended you to use the fog on this one, but it worked nicely. I do think it fits your stated mood a little better.
I love snowy egrets as well. Wish we had more of them in Memphis! Exposure looks very good, but the image is a little busy for my personal taste. I think Dennis gave some good feedback regarding the white balance, which is better in the repost. Also, not sure if something went wrong when resizing/uploading, but the image quality suffers when I open the image larger.
