Hi Matt,
For the most part, photography is an art form and as such there is fair degree of artistic license involved. There is never one absolute way of composing a photograph or getting the exposure correct; most of the time it is up to the photographer to decide what they prefer.
This is one of those images in which a lot of reviewers might actually describe themselves as being satisfied with the overall result. In as much as I like the still conditions though, I actually feel that the composition and exposure are rather loose in this picture.
Part of the problem for me, is that the top half of the image is brighter than the lower half, and my eyes want to go upwards even though there is nothing there to look at.
There are two solutions to this particular problem. The first to darken the top half of the frame slightly by either burning it in with the burn tool or applying a gradient as part of an exposure compensation using either the RAW conversion software (assuming you made the image in RAW) or in Photoshop. The other simple solution though, is simply to crop the top 15% of the image.
I also feel that the exposure is too dark for this picture. The elements that should appear closer to white, particularly along the egrets back, are actually grey.
One option would simply be to apply a levels or a curves adjustment but in this instance I think it makes more sense to add a circular selection around the bird and feather that selection to about 250 pixels. The next step is to select the exposure adjustment option and increase the exposure around the bird, as I have done in the example below. This simple trick maintains the darker boundary as a vignette while lightening the bird itself.
I think this final result looks a little happier. For the hell of it I have also added another play on this image using Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4.
Cheers,
Anthony
Image Doctor's edited version
Image Doctor's alternate version... just for fun.
This image has grain added to it and a Bi-Color (user defined) filter from Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4
