The Pose

[Robert Kimbrell]

I took this shot last year. The Reddish Egrets are starting to get their colors this time of year in South West Florida. I hope to get out and find some very soon. I added a sliver of canvas to the right to balance the image.
Nikon D-800 700mm
F/8, 1/1250 ISO 640

[gail bisson]

Lovely image Robert.
I like your POV and the classic umbrella pose. For those of you that have never seen this, this action is quite fast paced and is tricky to capture.
Your DOF is excellent and I love the grasses as well as the vegetation in the BG. Nice soft light.
I would evict the merganser personally.
Gail

[Frank Schauf]

Nice classic pose, Robert.

[Marina Scarr]

I think this is a fun image with a good story. Love the reddish in breeding colors, and they ARE starting to get their color now. I would leave the merganser b/c it's on its way over to feed on the egrets left overs.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Great IQ and moment captured, Robert. Nice getting this classic pose, as Gail mentioned, with the speed at which it occurs. Like the grasses and the BG works very well. Kind of like the Merganser dropping in too.




Geoffrey

[Diane Miller]

Gorgeous capture!! Maybe just a squeak more saturation?? The merganser adds to the story, for me, and fills out some space, but this one could go either way.

[Gerald Kelberg]

Looks really great to me - never having had the pleasure of photographing these egrets.

I feel the merganser is a different story to the main one of the hunting egret, so would evict it as a distraction...

Never known an egret to leave any "left overs", Marina!

Thanks for sharing.

Gerald

[Pao Dolina]

Awesome image Gerald.

[arash_hazeghi]

nice pose and display of hunting behavior. I wish the near wing was a bit more raised and I would also clone out the OOF merganser

TFS

[Daniel Cadieux]

Excellent pose and habitat. Low angle is super nice too. Maybe shorten the one grass as to not have it touch the base of the bill. I could go either way about the merganser - with a slight edge to it not there. Super nicely done overall...makes me wish I was at Ft. Desoto right now.

[Robert vanMierop]

Classic "canopy fishing" behavior. Fun to see as well as to get on camera. I agree with eviction of the Merganser, and with a grin I agree with what Gerald said about Reddish Egrets not leaving left-overs.

[Kirk Benson]

We are so fortunate to have the RE's visit us in SoCal too, one of my very favorite birds to photograph... this is a wonderful classic hunting pose Robert, the front wing is high enough to allow the face to be well-lit. The Mergie is a personal choice, it's not a distraction for me. My only suggestion is that I would love to see more overall saturation and/or contrast as the image looks a bit flat to my eye. Very nice image that i really enjoyed seeing.

[Robert Kimbrell]

Thanks for all the replies, I really appreciate it.