Thank you everyone for putting me straight. I will change tack. I have learnt a lot this week. Thank you.

Thank you all for taking the time to look and comment. Back the drawing board.

I do have some bird in flight photographs. I think grain could be a problem as fast shutter speeds are needed. Is it worth my while looking at these or should I move onto other subjects?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/35528366/GreyHeron3.jpg

Point taken about the fact that it needs to be doing something more interesting for stock. Is this likely to also apply for an application?

Is this version better quality wise? It is exposure wise midway between the other too and has some noise reduction. I will have a go at doing two exposures and then merging them.

Thank you everyone for your patience and taking time to comment. I have learnt more about my own photography this week than I have in years of reading and taking pictures.

The initial pictures showed the neck as over exposed so I reduced the exposure. When developing the Raw file I made sure that I didn't have the red dots (in Adobe camera raw) showing over exposure of the neck. But I did think that they looked over exposed. I will try a new conversion and see if I can get it looking better.

It was a hand held exposure with a high shutter speed as I did not expect the heron to stay still as long as he did - I thought I might get an in flight shot.

I did do some denoising but was afraid of over doing it and losing detail. Should I have denoised it further?

Thank you all for your helpful and constructive criticism. Unfortunately reshooting is not an option at the moment as it is about 150 miles from where I live but I will be returning to the area in a couple of months time. There are lots of castles in the area. So I will have another go then, at a better time of day and bear in mind all the comments made so far.
Thank you.

Thank you for a very prompt and helpful reply.

Now it has been pointed out to me I can see just what you mean.

I need to be a lot more objective and critical about my pictures and see them as others do, not see them as I wanted them to be!

Thank you for taking the time to look and comment.

First post. Thank you.