I took this photo at the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge in May. The water was drained but there was still a small pond next to the photo blind. So there were still a few birds around the water. This Great Blue Heron showed up and just looked magnificent. The Great Blue Heron is the official bird for the city of Portland, Oregon.
I tried doing HDR on this photo but it really messed up the beak and the feathers. I worked for a while in Photomatix Pro to get a realistic and stunning image but nothing really seemed to work. So this is not an HDR image. I did use Topaz Adjust. It gave a lot of options that did work well. I finally decided to use Portrait Smooth on this photo. It really worked well with the bokeh of the background that the lens produced (Nikon 600mm f/4 AF-S II).
What do you think? Do the feathers lack too much detail? Would you rather have more detail showing on the bird or does it all kind of flow together? I like the way this looks somewhat like a painting. The Great Blue Heron looks very regal is this stance to me and the background, which is not great, is not distracting.
