Night Heron at Sunset

If you would like to post, you'll need to register. Note that if you have a BCG store account, you'll need a new, separate account here (we keep the two sites separate for security purposes).

Hello All, took these about ~30 mins before sunset. The bird was sitting high up with the sun directly on it. I could see some 'blinkies' when reviewing images in the camera so I reduced exposure by -1. Not much done in terms of PP, some NR to the background and some colors, shadows and level adjustment. Please advise on whether the highlights are blown, image is sharp enough and any other critique of course. These were taken with a D7500+500PF, Hand held, 1/1000s, f5.6, Auto ISO (360).

DSC_9981-ksk.jpg
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
DSC_0742-ksk.jpg
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
 
I like it. I certainly wouldn't say the highlights are 'blown' as to me that implies hard clipped and unrecoverable which they don't appear to be. But if you haven't already you might try a little bit of Highlight Recovery (bring down the Highlight slider in LR) to try to bring out some detail in the white breast feathers.

Overall the exposure looks pretty good to me and the colors, especially that eye look great. I prefer the composition and use of the overall frame in the second image and might crop to a 4x5 aspect ratio or otherwise crop the top one a bit to lose some of the background above the Heron's head that and if this already a crop I might recenter a bit to put a little more space below his feet in the top image.

One other thing, for posting on these forums it's good practice to limit your images to no more than 1200 pixels horizontally or 800 pixels vertically. As these are posted it's really hard to see the entire image without scrolling up and down and that's on my 27" photo monitor, on my MacBook I have to zoom way out on Safari and even then it clips a bit of the top image which makes it hard to take in the whole composition.

Great images and great job jumping on the golden hour lighting. Nice job!
 
Hello All, took these about ~30 mins before sunset. The bird was sitting high up with the sun directly on it. I could see some 'blinkies' when reviewing images in the camera so I reduced exposure by -1. Not much done in terms of PP, some NR to the background and some colors, shadows and level adjustment. Please advise on whether the highlights are blown, image is sharp enough and any other critique of course. These were taken with a D7500+500PF, Hand held, 1/1000s, f5.6, Auto ISO (360).

View attachment 19153View attachment 19154
Great shots Kevin! That eye just jumps out at you.👍👍👍
 
@Kevin Great shots, well done.

I hope you do not mind, I took the liberty of downloading both images and after opening both them in ART and using the clipped highlight function (setting >253) the results from the first image are shown as black dots in the image below.
I did not bother posting the results from the second one as there were less indications of clipped highlights, only in the eye, from the reflection of the sun.
Test_DSC_9981-ksk.jpg
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

As you can see there are minimal indications, none on the chest feathers but some in the eye and the right hand white feather trailing from the head.
I would be very pleased if I could get results as good as these.
 
I like the composition of them both and that you're at eye level more or less.

The background is busy and distracting. With f5.6 as your max aperture you have limited options: try a different position so that geometry pushes the background further away or desaturate and blur it in post.
 
Back
Top