I went to print one of my favorite rookery pictures from this spring, and it bothered me that the background clutter detracted so much from the portrait of the mother and baby Tricolored Heron.  I love the way the baby is peeking out from under Mama, but it was easy to miss him altogether in my original image.

So I decided to break my “I don’t use Photoshop to significantly alter my images” rule.  All I did was soften the background, remove a few twigs from the nest, and crop it a bit.  The result draws your eye to the mother/baby pair with fewer distractions.  Here’s the result: