Krob78, Mr. Otter, Barrfly, digital paradise and all you other photogs....very beautiful and inspiring shots. Looking at your work keeps me interested in pursuing this hobby and trying to make photographs like you can 
Some I took at dusk today in my yard. This young heron has been coming around for about a month when I feed the fish in the canal, but he was never able to catch a fish in several dozen tries....until now. This tilapia was large and it took him several minutes to finally swallow. 
Taken with a 7D and 100-400mm L @ 400mm. Almost dusk and was very overcast (started to rain as I took the last shot), so I used a 580 on camera flash with a better beamer. I am a total noob when it comes to flash since I never use it and haven't yet learned. I think these were overexposed and so I had to try and fix it with DPP. Constructive advice welcome. Thanks.
Thank you for your kind words...
They're beautiful images Serendipity! If they were all overexposed, you pulled them back in pretty well in DPP. #2 still shows some overexposure, the others pulled back nicely. I think you may find that you could get substantially better results pulling exposure back in LR4 or LR5. There are a few more options to do so with. Not just exposure, but you can use the slider or the brush for highlights, whites or exposure... Just my opinion, I use both but use dpp very little the last 3 years.
If you decide to purchase LR, there are some excellent tutorials online either at the adobe website or scott kelby training vids... both great resources. You can learn LR quite fast... it's not nearly as much a learning curve as CS5 or CS6 which are also excellent in concert with LR...
Great job on these ones, those are the money shots!
