Egret

[AlfandBen]

Taken on the river Orwell. What looks at first sight like tin foil is actually water from around the fish it has in it's beak.

[David_MC]

Background is a bit busy but otherwise its a nice shot. You seemed to have handled the exposure pretty well.

[Isac]

Lovely bird and well photographed in its hunting ground.

[AlfandBen]

Background is a bit busy but otherwise its a nice shot. You seemed to have handled the exposure pretty well.

Lovely bird and well photographed in its hunting ground.

Thanks gents. unfortunately not much to be done about the background but other than that I was quite pleased overall.

[Isac]

... and so you should be. Not everyone gets to see them, let alone get a photo! I have several photos of them, so I can relate to your pleasure.

[wigz]

Well done to get it with a fish - it makes a much more interesting shot. A pity that the fish tends to merge with the background but you don’t get much choice and have to take what is there.

[AlfandBen]

Thanks Alan.

[avkomp]

good action captured with this shot, It looks as though the whites are blown on the egret though, if you could do a highlight reduction on this image, or even a selective highlight reduction on just the egret, I think you will get lots more details in there.
edit: I downloaded the jpg you posted and opened it. my system thinks it is blown too, acr had the egret red, that highlight reduction removed, but probably needed the full sized image to recover stuff.
.great action captured though, well done

[AlfandBen]

good action captured with this shot, It looks as though the whites are blown on the egret though, if you could do a highlight reduction on this image, or even a selective highlight reduction on just the egret, I think you will get lots more details in there.
edit: I downloaded the jpg you opened it. my system thinks it is blown too, acr had the egret red, that highlight reduction removed, but probably needed the full sized image to recover stuff.
.great action captured though, well done

Hi Stephen, Thanks for the comments. I also thought the whites looked a bit blown and had tried a highlight reduction. I will have another go. The edit had me a bit confused but I'm guessing there's a word / words missing and that you downloaded the image I uploaded? Feel free to post an edited version if you like. Your editing skills are likely to be far better than mine.

[avkomp]

All I did was get the image you posted and open in photoshop. The camera raw filter is set to show blown highlights and lost blacks. It showed red on the highlights. I reduced highlight slider and red went away. Cos it was only a small image, no details came back but on your original image, they may well come back. Funny cos on some birds, nothing helps but does on others. Try it and see

[AlfandBen]

Understand now. I don't have Photoshop but will see what I can find elsewhere.

[AlfandBen]

Hi Stephen. I have a very old version of Photoshop Elements so was able to replicate what you were saying. The original image was taken in JPG mode so I don't think there is any more detail there to be recovered.

[avkomp]

just for stamps, I had another look at this bird in photoshop, full highlight reduction did in fact pull the whites down a bit and I could see a folded wing line.
the killer is that it tended to make the bird grey instead of white.
also there were quite a few jpg artifacts as expected. having said that, if you tried it on the full sized image, it might come up a bit.

you set a tough task here cos that egret is mega white and on a dark background. if you set the exposure on the egret, you get it right but the background is very dark and you miss the action of the bird and fish. damned if you do etc.
personally in this situation I would have gone for the bird and fish as you have. afterall it is about capturing interesting behaviour etc.
you did good