Each day I enjoy more and more making images in which the bird is surrounded by part of its environment. In this kind of images, the bird keeps the role of main subject instead of the fact that, at first glance, is difficult for the eye to locate it in the composition. This is exactly how I see purple herons in most of my visits to Brazo del Este. Many times when I am driving in the roads between rice fields the only sign of birds that I can have is just a small and subtle movement of a long, S shaped, neck hiding between the grasses, pointing the bill up. Then you stop the car and one, two, sometimes even more unnoticed birds flushes from their invisible cover, suddenly. With some training and experience the human eye is able to interpret those subtle movements in the green sea of grasses and to detect the eyes of a purple, squacco, little or grey heron hiding in the rice fields. When that happens, the bird remain motionless allowing a few seconds for a composition job and it is a joy for a birder and for a photographer.
This image is from the past summer in Brazo del Este, near Doñana National Park in Spain and it was made in the nice company of a BPN fellow that was visiting Spain. He allowed me to try his D3 with my 500VR and this one is part of the result. Hope you like this image and feel free to comment and criticize it.
:)
