Egret in fall colors

I'm trying to decide if I should put any more work into this shot. It is pretty soft, but I like the colors. I''m thinking of cleaning up all the shmutz in the water and maybe the stumps. What do you think, is it worth the effort? Any other critique or comments?

Thanks in advance for your comments!

I like the colors, but to me, it looks more OOF than soft.

OOF...But nice colors.

Yeah, I should throw this in the circular file... it was pretty dark and I was far away. Shutter speed of 1/125 at 300mm. The good news is this is close so I'll go back and see if I can do a better job.

Thanks for the feedback.
cmh

You have a good spot to return to. Keep at it. I found a place where Egrets and other wildlife hang out. Finally got in it with a blind and sat there for over 3 hours. Had 1 egret walk right by the blind.

I'm knee deep in learning how to shoot wildlife. Even on a tripod it is hard for me to get the focus right. They never to stop moving. It might take a few trips but you will get some good photo's there.

I have some egrets here, http://www.flickr.com/​photos/77200552@N06/ if you want to have a look. There not as good as these guys here take but I'm learning.

I think you should work it a bit. Sharpening really helps it and pushing the colors a bit does also. On your original you should get much better results.

Thanks Qbx - I'll play with it some more on my original. If anything, I think I'll use it as practice cloning out all the white and green bits in the water to clean it up.
cmh

I might use it for practice as you said, but otherwise, I wouldn't keep it. It's just TOO out of focus for me. The colors are great and the composition was nice; just need to get the detail in there.

Way over saturated in my opinion.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.

Gorgeshooter - can I ask if you feel the original post is also way over saturated? It is pretty close in color to straight out of camera, with DPP defaults (which I know is not too meaningful as the camera settings could be boosting colors).

Thanks.

Your original colors look very good IMO, just go back(soon and same time of day) and shoot again with better sharpness...Hopefully the bird will be back too.

rrblint wrote in post #15045609
Your original colors look very good IMO, just go back(soon and same time of day) and shoot again with better sharpness...Hopefully the bird will be back too.

I do intend to go back, but I'm not sure if the Egret reads this forum so I don't know if it will get the message...

I like my original colors as well, but I like to hear a lot of opinions and I have learned from Gorgeshooter's critique on other threads, so I am curious about his opinion on this.

Thanks all.

cmh512 wrote in post #15045481
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.

Gorgeshooter - can I ask if you feel the original post is also way over saturated? It is pretty close in color to straight out of camera, with DPP defaults (which I know is not too meaningful as the camera settings could be boosting colors).

Thanks.

Sorry..I was referring to the edit and should have clarified that.
Do you shoot JPEG or RAW? Sometimes JPEGs can be over saturated in camera depending on your settings.

GorgeShooter wrote in post #15046149
Sorry..I was referring to the edit and should have clarified that.
Do you shoot JPEG or RAW? Sometimes JPEGs can be over saturated in camera depending on your settings.

I shoot RAW, but the 'out of camera' shot that DPP shows upon opening the RAW file I think is still using the camera's settings for the initial rendering. Maybe I'm wrong about this and it is using some presets within DPP. At any rate, since I shoot in RAW I havn't paid much attention to the camera's settings for colors or sharpness. I think I was also shooting with auto white balance for this shot.

cmh512 wrote in post #15038796
Yeah, I should throw this in the circular file... it was pretty dark and I was far away. Shutter speed of 1/125 at 300mm. The good news is this is close so I'll go back and see if I can do a better job.

Thanks for the feedback.
cmh

Nice shot. I really like the colors and the idea.

But it is badly OOF. A one-stop faster shutter speed may have helped. Remember that a good shutter speed is about 1/focal length. In this case 1/300, more than a stop faster than your 1/125.