The background sort of gives the shot a two dimensional effect. There are a lot of people who have a problem with an animal or bird shot that has clearly "human touch" items in them, aka boards, fence, buildings ect. The processing is great for detail and color contrast, however it looks a little overdone to me.
Free study challenges are the toughest, because with all the DPC'ers shooting all month and entering their best shots of the month, the bar is quite a lot higher in voting.
There is nothing really "wrong" with this shot. It's just not a great free study shot that grabs my attention and makes me want to look at it for a while to hunt for the finer details and nuances. You are fortunate to live where you can find such nice and relatively tame birds to photograph.
First thing that strikes me is that there's nothing interesting happening with the light in this shot. If you look at the heron, he almost looks like a cardboard cut-out.
First time I saw one of these guys I was completely confused as to what sort of Heron it was. I'd only seen the adults before. I don't know why birds insist on changing appearance when growing up AND/or growing amorous; it's much harder to ID them in anything other than adult breeding plumage!
Nice detail and I like how he has his feet positioned; looks kind of endearingly awkward.
In the challenges be careful about completely obliterating the background. It can be grounds for disqualification. But I really like that effect here. It's almost like a bird book illustration. And the detail is excellent.
I actually didn't get rid of the background... when we were taking pictures of that little guy, one of my shots accidentally made the background extremely overexposed. I ended up liking it.
Free Studies never do as well as we hope. :~( This is a good image though. In the challenges be careful about completely obliterating the background. It can be grounds for disqualification. But I really like that effect here. It's almost like a bird book illustration. And the detail is excellent.
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