Squacco heron (Ardeola ralloides) in flight

[Juan Aragonés]

Thi species is a real nightmare to expose because the wings are so bright and white that it is really difficult to get a satisfactory result in terms of exposition. In this case, I predicted the flight pattern of the bird, it was really easy because there were a lot of squaccos following the same pattern, then I calculed a good exposure and added +0,7 stops. In the digital room I saved the overexposed whites keeping lots of details in the greens and keepimg the balance between the dark fields of rice and the brillant wings of the birds in the evening light. :)

Nikon D300 AFS Nikkor 500VR, handheld from the car, manual exposure, almost full frame, ISO640, 1/1650s f7,1

Brazo del Este (Sevilla) Spain

[Mark Medcalf]

Excellent shot and very sharp. Like the preperation you you made in anticipating the shot and flight path. It certainly paid off.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Is this a hybrid or do they really look like this? I like the wing position, sharpness and BG and only wish he would fly towards you. If it were mine I would tone down the whites a tad more, even though they are not overexposed.

[Randy Stout]

Juan:

Nicely handled exposure, and I appreciate the challenge this represents after working with loons for two weeks.
Excellent full down wing position.
I do agree with Axel about the angle of the bird, and might trade a smidge of wing position for better head angle if you have images earlier in this series.

Cheers

Randy

[Keith Bauer]

Great work with the exposure. I think your whites look great. Nice planning and a nice end result.

[Harshad Barve]

Whites looks gorgeous here , BG is killer with nice flying pose and HA
TFS

[Dave Barnes]

Ditto flight angle, had it been just a bit more towards you it would have been a killer.

[Gerald Kelberg]

Albeit the angle of the heron is just at the limit, it is a super image. But there is something I am not getting here!:confused:
Surely adding +.7 would have blown out the whites completely - right or wrong, I would have been decreasing exposure to keep the whites and perhaps under expose the rest - aiming to bring back the midtones in PP. The detail in the whites looks good, so you must have performed some real magic in PP! Can you throw some light on what you have done for me, please.

Thanks,

Gerald

[arash_hazeghi]

Nice green BG and good sharpness on the bird, whites are still hot and bird is flying away, sharp eye saves some of it. TFS

[Juan Aragonés]

Axel, I apologize for the delay in answering to your question but it has been a really busy week at the office. The bird is not an hybrid, but a moulting bird with feathers from the summer plumage mixed with feathers from the wintering plumage :)


Is this a hybrid or do they really look like this? I like the wing position, sharpness and BG and only wish he would fly towards you. If it were mine I would tone down the whites a tad more, even though they are not overexposed.

[Juan Aragonés]

Gerald, my apologies for delay in getting back to your question. The overxposure in the whites is easily fixed during RAW conversion, no magic here :). I try to overexpose because the fix of the whites do not generates noise while the oposite, fixing the shadows, generates tons of noise. I used a double conversion technique for this image, one RAW conversion for the whites and another one for the midtones and, at the end I got a image with good exposure in the midtones and overexposed whites that I combined with the other version (with underexposed midtones and good exposure on the whites). Something like a HDR image.
Hope this helps


Albeit the angle of the heron is just at the limit, it is a super image. But there is something I am not getting here!:confused:
Surely adding +.7 would have blown out the whites completely - right or wrong, I would have been decreasing exposure to keep the whites and perhaps under expose the rest - aiming to bring back the midtones in PP. The detail in the whites looks good, so you must have performed some real magic in PP! Can you throw some light on what you have done for me, please.

Thanks,

Gerald

[Juan Aragonés]

Arash, as far as I can remember, I processed the whites to avoid hot pixels (pixels in the 255 level of the histogram). I agree that the whites may look a bit bright but not hot :)


Nice green BG and good sharpness on the bird, whites are still hot and bird is flying away, sharp eye saves some of it. TFS