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Little Blue Heron in flight
Here is another image from my recent travels, captured at Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge on April 3rd. There were lots of birds feeding in the canals, which are water managed, and I was getting some images of birds catching fish from where I was sitting on the bank. But I found that as other people walked past, the birds were always spooked very easily, and flew off into a nearby field. At first I was a little aggrivated by this, but then it occurred to me that this provided an opportunity for some flyers. So as the birds were spooked, and then after a short while began to return, I set up for flyers and tried to got a few interesting shots. As you can tell from this image, this is not a good time of the day to be shooting - light is harsh. But I did find a few images that I liked from the many attempts. A small amount of canvas was cropped off the top and right side of the image to improve composition.
This little blue heron flyer was captured with a Canon 1D Mark IIN camera and Canon 300mm f2.8L lens and 1.4x extender, manual exposure 1/2000 sec at f7.1, hand-held.
Some explanatoins and post processing details
Thanks to all for your comments and helpful suggestions. I'll reveal some of the post processing that was done on this image and that may explain some of the flaws that have been pointed out here.
The bird was a little bit underrexposed and I understand that it was somewhat backlit. I'm aware that I should have exposed the shot a little bit more, and I should have at least tried using flash (don't remember why I didn't). Underexposing the shot was a pure accident. I could have shot Av or Tv. but I prefer Manual mode for flyers because results are more consistent than shooting in the other modes. For example, if I had used my normal Av setup for flyers against the sky (+2/3 or +1 EV) and then the bird flew low and had a background of darker foilage instead of blue sky, I would severely overexpose the shot. I was using manual simply because that way the shot exposure is not affected as much by the bird flying against the bright sky, or in front of a darker background, as is the case in this image. If you meter against the sky, often you find you need about +2/3, and if you meter against the background, you may need - 2/3 or -1. This realization usually makes it possible to shoot manual, and not mess with EC, and then you can usually get the shot no matter where the bird flies, against sky or trees. I just missed on the exposure here in spite of that.
The reason that there is some noise evident in the bird but not the background, is that I isolated the background and applied NR to it, but not to the bird, for fear of blurring the detail. I did make shadow/highlight adjustments but I applied separate amounts to the bird and to the backgroud, since I had isolated the two with a quick mask. I probably lightened the bird a little bit too much, and I think this is what made the noise more evident. Maybe I'll go back to the original and apply a small amount of NR to the bird and see if I can get away with it, without losing too much detail. I didn't even attempt to work on the eye in this image. Bottom line is that although the shot was a little bit underexposed, it wasn't bad and I liked the comp and wing postion, so I tried to make presentable. I saw some noise in the feathers on the full sized image and I had hoped that when I downsized it to 800 px, it might not be visible. Guess you guys called me out on it. Thanks for that - every day I learn a little something more than the day before...
By the way, I hope to see a lot of you folks on Saturday at the Alligator Farm rookery. I'll probably be wearing my worn out white Chi Chi Rodriguez hat. Look for me if you're there.