Bird in the Rain

[Lava Lamp]

It was raining pretty steadily when I photographed this Yellow Crested Night Heron with my Nikon N80 and 75-300 zoom using Kodak Supra 200. The rain seemed to throw of the exposure and make it a little grainy. I smoothed some of that out in NeatImage. Does it look too fake? What do you think otherwise?

[Rick]

Pretty good. I like the way the way the weathered tree branches frame the bird. Unusual and interesting.

[Charles Hess]

You did a good job with NeatImage in keeping most of the detail in the frame. Excellent composition and framing of the bird in the branches. Biggest issue is that it's a bit dark, losing some detail in the bird's darker areas and head. Still, a nice shot.

[PuckJunkey]

...rain can be interesting. I agree you did a nice job of "cleaning the image up", but I was hoping to see the "bird in the rain". I think this would have been a good composition for it too because of the dark contrasty background (rather than just cloudy grey). The trick is to sort of blur the rain the way you might blur water in a stream, so it looks like streaks of water and not grey/blue dots everywhere.

And since you probably had to use a slow shutter speed anyway, I think you could easily achieve this effect. Especially if the bird is totally still (which they usually are in the rain).

Even so I like the composition a lot. Not your typical "bird on tree" shot. Nice work.

[Lava Lamp]

Dear L-L:

I like this picture because to me it says "Night" Heron at "night" (it looks like night to me anyway), and you did a good job! It doesn't look fake to me at all but, it does remind me of a similar picture I saw recently in a magazine.

Thank you for sharing this one.

Best to You,
Penny

P.S. Thanks for sharing that landscape website in your other post, I really enjoyed it!

Thanks. The photographer on the website link used to post here once in a whilre, but hasn't for a few years - at least not when I've been checking regularly. His stuff is just amazing.