The egret and the fish

[pharrael]

Hello!

I've been reading posts in this forum, so I decided to send my own shot. I am beginning in photography, so I am asking for some advices.

Here is the image without any editing:


After editing with gimp:


Well, when I first saw the image, I liked it. But after editing it I asked myself if I couldn't get the same result right in the camera. What makes the second image better (If it could be considered better)? Contrast?. Is there a way to achieve that with my camera? It is a panasonic FZ200. I know that it is not good as a DSLR camera, and the person behind it don't help so much

I tried to crop the image to emphasize the relation between the fish and the egret, but I didn't like the results. Any advice is very wellcome.

Thanks and sory for my english!

[Geoff F]

Some subjects are particularly tricky to photograph well; and pure white egrets, also swans and other white birds, are amongst this 'difficult bunch'.

All you can really do under these circumstances is to shoot for the main subject (bird) and ensure that the exposure, and focus, is correct. Not over exposed and with as much feather detail as possible.

Then try to recover and correct and background issues during editing. There is always a risk that if you try to achieve perfect results in just one unedited shot you will get problems with your main focal point; which in this case is the bird.

With this particular shot, I would try a very slight crop to reduce the space above the bird and a similar amount from the right. But not too much.

[pharrael]

Thanks Geoff! I think i didn't like the crop because I cropped to much! Well, do you think this way is better?



A much more aggressive crop

[Stagecoach]

As Geoff has said some shots are tricky but you have not made a bad job of this one at all. The strength in this image is what you have captured which far outweighs the fact that the exposure may not have been spot on but it's easily improved.

It's a great image and I would love to see it posted at a larger size, say 1200 pixels wide.

Here's my interpretation of a crop you can do and a square crop may also work keeping the egret well to the left.



Grahame

[pharrael]

Thanks Grahame!! I appreciate so much your help!! Here's the image with 1200px wide:



I called the image "Impossible love!"
I also tried the square crop: