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Self Critique
I’m unsure of the crop.
I ran the picture through topaz, and denoised and sharpened it.
Creative direction
I wanted to focus on the hurons meal, but am unsure of how to do so due to the foilage in the picture.
Specific Feedback
I’m happy with any and all critiques, but would prefer Aesthetic and Technical feedback.
Technical Details
Camera Settings:
Nikon Z7_2
400mm f/4.5
1/2500s
ISO 280
I used Lightroom and Topaz AI (for sharpening and denoise)
Description
We went to Point Peele this last Saturday, hoping to see some birds of prey. And while I did see quite a few hawks flying around, they were too far away to get good pictures of. The Marsh, however, had a lot more birds hanging out in the water, and this huron was fishing just as we were walking up to it!
Critique Template
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Hi Zach, Nice catch for you and the heron. I like seeing the fish at the tip of the beak with a good look at the eye of the bird. I prefer the tighter crop given the hefty amount of vegetation in the scene. The whites on the heron on the lower beak look kind of hot. Did you shoot this in Raw? I’m wondering if the whites could be darkened in post processing and perhaps the dark body of the fish could be lightened some.
This image gives a good sense of the habitat of the bird and where he/she must go to hunt.
Hi Zach. Your focus was dead on for this one with superb detail. Most of the reeds don’t bother me, but I do wish that out of focus foreground leaf hadn’t been there. However, the way it’s situated, I don’t thing I could remove it successfully. I agree with Allen that the whites should come down a bit-even if they’re not blown, you’ve lost all the plumage detail in them. Fine white feathers are notoriously difficult to handle and get detail without making them too gray. Pulling down the highlights using a local adjustment brush can often help. The angle of the fish makes it a bit difficult to extract detail from it, but you can try brightening it a bit and see if some starts to show.
This is still a fine behavioral image and the comments above are mostly minor issues.
Zach: I like your cropped version. The whites in the bird’s neck appear to be blown. Perhaps they can be recovered via the Highlights slider in LR. You might also want to try to brighten the bluegill just a bit to bring up some detail.
Yours is a very good capture of the daily life of the bird and its prey.
I did shoot in RAW, but unfortunately, there isn’t much I can do with the blown whites in the neck. I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m shooting birds in brightly lit areas.
I was able to brighten up the fish, and (hopefully) it looks much better!
Hi Zach. I’m on a tablet this morning, so not the best screen, but this does look a lot better. I don’t know what Nikon calls the feature, but I always have the overexposure indication turnes on these days as well as displaying the histogram. Since they’re both based on a jpeg version of what the camera is seeing, you can push the exposure a bit past what they’re indicating, but they’re a good reminder.
