Yellow-cr. Night Heron

This is a really great photograph. What kind of tripod and head did you use, I am looking to replace my tripod?

IMO this is your best image posted in Avian to date.

It is a good subject - the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron isn't nearly as widely distributed at the Black-crowned.

The pose is very good, showing off the plumage and head and beak to advantage.

The perch is an asset in the image, adding texture and form without overpowering the image.

The setting is neutral for the most part and makes a decent background to show off the subject without distracting from it.

Technicals look good, especially in the larger version.

Your 400mm max will limit what you can capture, so you'll be forced to crop more than others. This is probably as much as you will want to crop in the future in order to retain sufficient image quality and enough pixels for larger versions of the image.

With this opportunity and 400mm I would probably have composed this as a landscape format with more empty space on the right. That would have reduced the amount of cropping needed here, I think. That assumes, of course, that there wasn't some distracting element on the right.

I like the green moss showing on his beak -- gives me a sense of where he has been. The orange eye looks good -- good look at this species

OK, now we are talking. This is a very nice shot Barbara. I agree with everything Rich D stated. A great subject, and that makes a difference. Nice detail (55% is not bad). Nice setting with great habitat, but not distracting. Great job at 1/100s. Keep what you did with this shot in mind as you pursue your next shots. Remember, just because a bird presents itself as a POTENTIAL subject does not mean it is a good subject in a good location at a good time to make a pleasing image. This was a good photo op executed well.

Richard has given you a good critique and good advice. I know the spot very well where you took this—there is a colony of YCNHs in the SW corner of Woody Pond. Usually, the morning light there is pretty harsh, and I pass it by. I'll have to get down there in the evening sometime.

55% of FF isn't bad, if you are shooting from a solid platform in even light like this.

Really like the setting and the perch. Nice detail in the dark and the light feathers, excellent.

Ray

Barbara, your images keep getting better and better! I think this one is my favorite I have seen from you to date.Great comp, love the moss hanging from the beak! Good techs as well! BRAVO

Well done Barbara, this is a really nice image. The duck weed on its beak just adds a bit of a touch of humor to the shot, makes me wonder if it just tried for a fish and missed! Thanks for sharing, keep up the good work!

Thank you so much for the comments and also for the further instruction. I greatly appreciate it.

Everything in this image works for me Barbara, although going by your "cons", if whatever you cropped out was pretty much all filled with that vegetation on the surface of the water, I would have left much more of it in as a uniform backdrop, making the frame rectangular, and composing the picture so the Heron sits more to the left.

Very nice image, Barbara. Great detail in the heron, and very nice light. That angled perch and the crop that you chose make for a great composition. Nice background with no distractions. A great job.

The crop does not appear to be an issue to me, you have plenty of detail in the larger post.

I think that it turned out really well, Barbara. Interesting bird, nice pose, fine detail. I don't see a contribution of percent crop to the image quality here. It's a 10 MP image which is quite a respectable size. I'd be more concerned about the very slow ss: this bird was very cooperative about remaining still. After discussing crop effects at length on this website my conclusion is that, in general, the main reason to strive for a high % crop is that it is an indicator of how closely you were able to approach the bird. With a 400 mm lens you need to get pretty close, especially for a small bird. Incidentally, I find it curious that one of my birder friends told me that many birders don't like to see nature photographers approach birds closely (key question: under any circumstances?). They apparently would like if we used very low percent crops (i.e. maximum magnification).

Wow, excellent, especially for that large of a crop.
Richard said it all, and well, so I'll just add a "bravo" !
Sany

Nicely done Barbara. Keep headed this direction.

Very cool pose and setting to this. Rich D has some wonderful tips and I also like his choice of a landscape composition. Sometimes the setting the bird is in adds as much as the bird to the overall image. Nice job in getting this shot for 7 pm time frame and well seen.

Very well captured Barbara.
May