Please comment - I think it is a Heron

[KevinG3]

I believe this is a Heron but I'm not positive. I posted a similar picture on the sharing section but I would like comments so that I can imprive my bird shots. I'm finding that they aren't easy to photograph, especially with my G3 and no big Zoom lenses. Thanks for your comments...

http://www.pbase.com/image/22002286.jpg


KevinG3

[CyberDyneSystems]

Yes Kevin Definately a Heron,..

But seeing it again I am really blown away by the color.

The purplish hue around the neck is found on other herons including the little blue heron but the body looks more like one of the larger herons and that whitre chin is distincly a Great Blue Heron characteristic.

The Tricolored Heron was my first guess,. but it has a white underside and a distinct red eye surrounded by yellow which extends down the beak,.. this bird in your photo has neither of those characteristics.

The other candidate could be a Reddish Egret, but again the white chin tells me great blue,..

...also the dark "cap" is common characteristic of many herons,. (great Blue,. little Blue, and Green to name a few) and your heron has it,. but neither the Reddish Egret nor the Tricolor usually have it.

All this said,. there are difinate variations found in all these species,. so ...

we either have a Great blue with a decidedly purplish hue,.

...or we have a Tricolored heron or Reddish Egret that have somehow managed to gain some of the Great Blues distiguishing marks?

All three are found in Florida....

[jim monroe]

I agree with CDS definitely a heron and I would go with Great Blue Heron, especially based on the coloring of the head.
It is too bad there wasn't more light on the body. Birds just seem to want to make it difficult for us sometimes and not do what we want them to do. This is especially true of Great Blue Herons. I have spotted several recently but they have always been extremely skittish and take off almost immediately. The one time I had any luck photographing them was when one was more intent on feeding and was roaming around a shallow pool not too concerned with me.
What lense were you using here. what aperature, etc., and what distance from the bird? Just trying to get some idea of the situation so can put my own experiences in some perspective.

[KevinG3]

jim monroe wrote:
I agree with CDS definitely a heron and I would go with Great Blue Heron, especially based on the coloring of the head.
It is too bad there wasn't more light on the body. Birds just seem to want to make it difficult for us sometimes and not do what we want them to do. This is especially true of Great Blue Herons. I have spotted several recently but they have always been extremely skittish and take off almost immediately. The one time I had any luck photographing them was when one was more intent on feeding and was roaming around a shallow pool not too concerned with me.
What lense were you using here. what aperature, etc., and what distance from the bird? Just trying to get some idea of the situation so can put my own experiences in some perspective.


Jim,

I was using my Powershot G3 at full optical zoom. The bird was in a tree in my back yard and I ws standing on the ground about 15 feet or so from the bird. The sun was setting so there wasn't much light left. Settings were : 1/100s f/8.0 at 28.8mm with Flash - I'm not sure the flash reached him. I have an external flash but was only using the on-board flash this time.

Thanks for the comments. This includes CDS's comments also. I'l try to get better pictures of him soon.

[henkbos]

Kevin, try to overexpose a little the next time or use the build in flash (if possible). Teh sky will be too light, but at least you keep the details in the heron.

[KevinG3]

Okay. Thanks. One thing I've noticed is that on my ViewSonic U;trabright monitor pictures look great but when I view them from work on a trinitron they sometimes appear dark. I'm not sure how to make the picture look good on every monitor.

The heron picture was a bit dark though, even on my Viewsonic at home.

thanks again...

[CyberDyneSystems]

Ahaa,. so it was a sunset,. thus the extreme purple,.. (you know what you get when you mix red and blue :) )

I really like the image,. the bird looks positively carved in stone!

Low angle light like you get at sunset is a fickle freind,. it WILL give you the best images you will take,... some times! If you can get it exposed correctly and there aren't to many shadows (although some shadow is geat) the images can be exquisite.

[Sheri]

CyberDyneSystems wrote:
Ahaa,. so it was a sunset,. thus the extreme purple,.. (you know what you get when you mix red and blue :) )

I really like the image,. the bird looks positively carved in stone!

Low angle light like you get at sunset is a fickle freind,. it WILL give you the best images you will take,... some times! If you can get it exposed correctly and there aren't to many shadows (although some shadow is geat) the images can be exquisite.

You can also do a lot fairly easily to bring out shadow detail with post processing.

I've taken a quick stab in Photoshop at the posted photo. This is the effect of a couple of screen layers (one of which I toned down with the opacity setting) applied to the non-sky portions of the photo:

http://images.fotopic.net/?id=1396824&outx=760&oq=0&noresize=1&nostamp=1

[CyberDyneSystems]

That's pretty impressive PS work there Sheri!

[KevinG3]

Hay sheri-

Great job on editing my photo. The problem I have is that I have a Viewsonic Ultrabright monitor so the pictures look good on my monitor but sometimes appear too dark on other monitors, like my monitor at work. What exactly did you do to make the Heron brighter without over brightening the sky? And, if anyone has suggestions on how to edit my photos on my monitor and ensure that they are going to look as good on other monitors - I would like to hear your advice.

Thanks for the comments and thanks again Sheri for the nice job you did on editing my photo.


KevinG3

[Andy_T]

Hi Kevin,

try to calibrate your monitor!

Otherwise the prints you get will not have the right colour...

Regards,
Andy

[Sheri]

keving3 wrote:
Hay sheri-

Great job on editing my photo. The problem I have is that I have a Viewsonic Ultrabright monitor so the pictures look good on my monitor but sometimes appear too dark on other monitors, like my monitor at work. What exactly did you do to make the Heron brighter without over brightening the sky? And, if anyone has suggestions on how to edit my photos on my monitor and ensure that they are going to look as good on other monitors - I would like to hear your advice.

Thanks for the comments and thanks again Sheri for the nice job you did on editing my photo.


KevinG3

Hi Kevin,

With Photoshop in Windows, there's an app in the control panel called Adobe Gamma for adjusting your monitor.

What I did to brighten the heron was really easy.

Here's a little mini tut on Photoshop Screen Layers (which I used to brighten the heron):

http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop/ht/apsunderexposed.htm

After creating a screen layer, I actually deleted the sky from it rather than using masks. I selected the sky with a few clicks using the magic wand tool, add to selection option (anti aliased) and pressed the backspace key to delete it. Then I duplicated the modified screen layer and changed the opacity on the duplicate to about 17% using the slider in the layer palette.