Sittin' and Lookin'

Jenaya, first let me say congratulations on your recent "Youth photographer of the year award". Many more accolades will follow I'm sure.

Your image here is fantastic, my only recommendation might be to play around with the structure/detail definition of the feathers, they seem a bit blown or soft. Maybe just bring the detail out a touch might help.

I will echo John. I use Viveza and Color Efex for detail. I am also trying out Topaz. Getting detail out of the Great Egret is a chore!

Thanks for the comments! Actually, the whites are not blown. I used Color Efex Pro and Viveza to bring out the detail, but didn't want to push it too far. Perhaps the very low open light isn't helping matters.

Anyway, thanks again for the comments, it is much appreciated!!

Hi Jenaya. Just my taste, but I think I'd bring up the late evening backlighting just a bit more if you can. The oof reeds in the bg, particularly those at the left end of the clump have lines that I find distracting, but unless your competition allows quite a bit of post processing, I don't think you can do much about those. I do really like the perch but wish there had been a way of isolating it from the bg a bit more.

Jenaya, try using Viveza to darken the water a little. Making that slightly darker effectively makes your egret lighter by comparison. The balancing act will be in keeping your adjustments looking natural. In other words, you can use Viveza to lighten the egret slightly and darken the water slightly improving the way the egret separates, but you don't want it to end up looking like you had a spot light or flash pointed at the egret. This is where smaller, subtle changes work. All you are doing with this is using Viveza to build the masks that you would otherwise have to create to do the dodging (lightening) and burning in (darkening) that are allowed as traditional darkroom adjustments (so they are perfectly legal for most competitions). Also take a look at the fine feathers on the back of the egret. Even in the larger photo they look a little over sharpened so something may have happened when you were working on bringing the details out. Good job for difficult light.