Tricolored Heron

[Daniel Belasco]

canon 40d 500mm f4 IS lens @f6.3 1/640 iso 800


http://newimages.fotopic.net/?iid=1yp5rw&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

[Dave Blinder]

Nice timing and sharpness looks ok. Image comes across as very dark and lacking contrast. Maybe play with shadows/highlights and increase saturation to open it up a bit. Ideally, this shot would be taken with a healthy dose of fill flash.

[paul leverington]

Danny I think this is one of your best of your guy. I like the pose, the foot raised, and reflection. You could use a bit more head room for the reflection and it would improve greatly to get rid of the upper right light area.

Danny--listen up--YOU NEED TO GET SOME LIGHT ON THIS GUY. If there are no areas with light how about a different time of day? What happens on cloudy days? I know, I know, the sun always shines in the bahamas! Do you have a flash and extender? Or am I just seeing the result of underexposure and/or post processing? You got everything else for this guy to rock but he's too dark in every shot I've seen. Others have said the same too.

Bring us up to speed Danny and lets see if we can get you rolling on this. Lay out all the details say and whether or not you even want to brighten him up.

Paul

Hey--just had a thought--could you post either an address or geographical coordinates so I could look your pond up on google earth?

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Hi Daniel.
Very good looking tricolored. Love the lifted wings and under details. It's a pity the head on the reflection is almost touching the bottom. It seems like the light angle is not the best in this one.

[Daniel Belasco]

The Good news: Yes I have more room at the bottom below the head. I guess I sometimes crop tighter than I should.
Flash-- I never liked flash on wildlife photography but maybe I should give it a try. I have a 580EX and Betterbeamer, but only tried the BB once. One problem is that in order to catch the wingspread I have to shoot continuous because this Heron moves very fast when in the fishing mode. He moves like a Reddish Egret. A Reddish Egret must have taught him! So to use flash I don't know if I could get it to fire for every frame. I also shoot close to the heron, about 20-40 foot range, and don't know if the flash would bother him? Suggestions on BB setting for fill flash in this light?

I'm really shooting for the backgrounds and light and to get the richness in color in the natural settings there, so I take what I can get on the bird itself. The kind of light I'm shooting in is the sort of light where the bird is usually silhouetted against the evening sunlight. I can count on one hand the number of images I have seen from other bird photographers where there is any detail on the bird at all when shooting at sunset i.e. when you get the rich reflected colors of the sunset in the background and detail on the bird like I'm getting. Am I wrong?

I just need to be able to put this all together!!

On my monitor the image doesn't look underexposed. And when I print my images, which the final result as far as I'm concerned, the prints look like what's on the monitor in terms of color and exposure.

On my next post I'll try to post something that I consider a little more along a proper exposure but something I consider too bright.

something like this maybe:

http://newimages.fotopic.net/?iid=1yk89j&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

[paul leverington]

Danny--To get the flash to cycle quickly you need a battry pack. Like the quantum turbo for example. Measure the typical distance to your subject off your lens focus distance scale, then set that distance --less an ammount you want cause your doing fill flash. Try setting the distance on your strobe set to 1/2 of that that you measure your bird to be from the lens scale for starts. I prefer manual everything because it's predictable--but honestly I'm not the best at flash cause I prefer not to use it myself. Others here are very good at it--Artie is one of the best with exposure and flash knowledge that I can think of. But try the settings with the BB shooting the same settings you have been using cause they get the water at a nice tone. You just need to add some light to bring up the bird. You could even try a smaller apeture which would really darken things and then the bird would totally pop. Shoot at a starting place and tweak, tweak, tweak. Take some notes. Does your camera record sound? If so you could record a description of the data your using to accompany the shot.

If you shoot things as in your second post the water will be too bright. Super bright areas and super dark areas have a lot of comp weight. They are powerful and will draw too much viewer attention.

Paul

[Daniel Belasco]

Thanks Paul.
I'm going to try my flash for a few shots and see if I like the results. If so I may get the Quantum battery pack.
Thanks
dan