WIlliam Maroldo
06-19-2008, 08:20 PM
6:00 PM , Quintana, Texas, mud flats, Sony A-700, Tamron 200-500mm @500mm, 1/1250 sec, ISO 400, F14, shutter speed priority, spot metering. Hand held
The sun was fairly low on the horizon, partly cloudy, yet occasionally the sun cut through. Earlier, and from a distance, I had noticed the white bird, which I assumed was a great egret, along with several reddish egrets. I noticed the great egret was feeding like a reddish egret, the running, wings out spread, and I thought: "cool, that great egret has learned to hunt from the reddish egrets!" Not the first time I've been completely incorrect in interpreting a scene. An examination through the viewfinder at 500mm showed it was not a great egret at all, but a white morph of the reddish egret. I got closer and was taking pictures of the white morph, lighting was changing minute by minute as clouds passed the sun. Switching between ISO 200 and 400. Suddenly one of the reddish egrets attacked the white morph, and this image is the result.
Postmortem of image: The image has a lot of problems. Although it might sometimes be acceptable for technical failures to be overcome by an action capture, this is not clear in this case. Apparently the sun must have just broken free, and the F14 was the result of shutter speed priority and a ISO 400. The distance between the birds was probably greater than it appears, or the chasing bird would have been in sharper focus at F14. The exposure of the white bird was OK, though the area under the wing seems over exposed. The attacking bird is underexposed, partly due to the shadow cast by the fleeing bird. The right wing of the morph is out of focus, probably a depth of field effect, but I'm not convinced that is the case. The attacking birds right wing has been clipped, although post processing cropping might have logically narrowed the scene to not include it anyway. But then again maybe not.
The image has not been cropped. Since sharpening would probably be the last step in any sort of image resurrection, it was not done. Additional space is needed above the morph. Noisy background.
Comments and recommendations would be appreciated.
The sun was fairly low on the horizon, partly cloudy, yet occasionally the sun cut through. Earlier, and from a distance, I had noticed the white bird, which I assumed was a great egret, along with several reddish egrets. I noticed the great egret was feeding like a reddish egret, the running, wings out spread, and I thought: "cool, that great egret has learned to hunt from the reddish egrets!" Not the first time I've been completely incorrect in interpreting a scene. An examination through the viewfinder at 500mm showed it was not a great egret at all, but a white morph of the reddish egret. I got closer and was taking pictures of the white morph, lighting was changing minute by minute as clouds passed the sun. Switching between ISO 200 and 400. Suddenly one of the reddish egrets attacked the white morph, and this image is the result.
Postmortem of image: The image has a lot of problems. Although it might sometimes be acceptable for technical failures to be overcome by an action capture, this is not clear in this case. Apparently the sun must have just broken free, and the F14 was the result of shutter speed priority and a ISO 400. The distance between the birds was probably greater than it appears, or the chasing bird would have been in sharper focus at F14. The exposure of the white bird was OK, though the area under the wing seems over exposed. The attacking bird is underexposed, partly due to the shadow cast by the fleeing bird. The right wing of the morph is out of focus, probably a depth of field effect, but I'm not convinced that is the case. The attacking birds right wing has been clipped, although post processing cropping might have logically narrowed the scene to not include it anyway. But then again maybe not.
The image has not been cropped. Since sharpening would probably be the last step in any sort of image resurrection, it was not done. Additional space is needed above the morph. Noisy background.
Comments and recommendations would be appreciated.