Description: I took the day off on Thursday and headed out to a local park at daybreak. Great blue herons have begun the spring ritual of nest building and the action was remarkable. The sunlight was warm and with interesting clouds produced a fairly interesting scene.
Specific Feedback Requested: Please let me know what you think about the white balance. I find this to be very challenging to get right.
Pertinent technical details or techniques: D850 600mm f4 (1/2000 sec at f8.0, ISO 1250).Topaz DeNoise AI, crop for comp, levels and tweaked the white balance to approximate how the scene looked to my eye. I also reduced the saturation down a tad as well.
Is this a composite? (focus stacks or exposure blends are not considered composites)
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Outstanding image with excellent light. I don’t have any concerns about the white balance. The warmth of this image really makes it work. You’ve done an exceedingly good job with detail, color balance, and activity. Well composed. I like this a lot.
Fantastic capture of behavior with wonderful sharpness and detail!! I love the pose of the incoming bird – I assume the male.
I struggle with WB for early and late light, and my reasoning is usually if there isn’t much to indicate the time of day I’ll bias it more toward realistic colors for the birds. The bit of color in the sky here is a hint, but not a really strong one.
Lovely. I’m particularly impressed with the soft, warm tones, and the perfect position of heads, wings and held branch. It all came together nicely.
To me, there’s a bit too much empty space above and to the left. I understand that this presentation centers the subjects, but my eye wants to go from the herons down to the nest and the remaining branches/textures on the right. The swath of sky fights against that movement.
Excellent action and detail, Jim. I think I agree with Max about a little off the upper left. The white balance looks pretty good. I’d probably go just a tad cooler but this works.
Thank you @David_Schoen , @David_Bostock@Dennis_Plank , @Max_Waugh , and @Diane_Miller for your critiques. I followed @Max_Waugh 's and @Dennis_Plank 's suggestion for cropping some from the top and left. I also bumped up the blues slightly as well. The diagonal formed by the wing and upper left corner seems to have strengthened the comp. Repost is below the original image. Thanks again…Jim
Hi Jim
This is a great shot of nest building and the inter action this pare of Great Glue Herons. I hope you do not mend, I down-loaded your photograph and did a white balance on the left-hand Heron’s crown.
Thank you for sharing the nest building with us.
Peter
Thank you @Peter_Morrissey. Your white balance transforms the overall color temperature to mid-day sun. To maintain the realism of when the photo was taken, using layers and reducing the opacity of the color corrected layer might be an ideal method for delicately tweaking the color balance while maintaining the warmth of the morning sun. Once again thank you…Jim
Jim, I’m coming in late on this one. Playing catch up. I love the early morning light on this and was thinking your original was spot on in every way, but I do like your repost. I think it improved an almost perfect image. Really neat catching them in action as they prepare for their off spring. Wonderful details and sweet lighting, as well as a frame full of action.
Hi Jim
DXO Photo Lab doesn’t work in layers, I used the White Balance custom eye drop (pick color) to change the color balance. I will have to think about how to make subtle changes to the color balance, I do not have Photoshop or Lightroom.
Peter
Thank you. I’m sure DXO will figure out how to get a layers function in the program. One way of doing subtle changes to the light is using the histogram and tweak each channel (RGB) independently until you get the lighting perfectly…Jim
