Looking Through

[HiImTom]

I would love to get feedback on this one. I like the photo but I am not too happy with the focus on the bird. He was intended to be my subject, however, I was having the hardest time getting him to focus through the brush. I attempted to sharpen him in PP, but still feel he is too out of focus. Any other ideas on how to improve this one? One other thought is to lighten the ground around the egret? Is it worth it; do you feel anything from the image or is it blah?

[Digital]

I like this photo, especially how the bird is framed between the two trees. The contrast of the subject leads your eye right to it.

Bruce

[Bobobird]

A very nice shot. At this size, I don't think you need to do much with the bird. Looks pretty natural as is.

[Geoff F]

That scene, Tom, is one of those cases where you have to choose between focusing on the bird or the foreground trees, you can't have both in sharp focus; particularly at F5.6.

An alternative, shooting on a tripod, would have been to manually focus on each item in turn with two shots then combine them. Not easy to do and get a natural looking result though.

This shot does work, but you will have to accept that the bird will be slightly in soft focus, like the rest of that background.

Manually focusing on the bird, if auto focusing was giving problems, would have been an option. But that would have produced a lot of soft branches which would have created another problem.

[HiImTom]

Thank you all for the feedback. Thank you Geoff for the information. I would love to see how it looked with the branches in soft focus, maybe next time Really wishing I had the equipment that let me start to experiment further, not meant to be for now though... Out of the 5 shots I got off before he moved on, this one offered the best of all possibilities imho. Thanks again for all the feedback and information, you all are always so helpful!