One of my favorite shots of this summer and a good one to start with as I begin my journey here at BPN. This great egret was coming in for a landing in the shallow water along the river. Watched this one for a few days and finally got some nice light early in the morning. Tried really hard to not blow the highlights.
Shot with Canon 7D mk ii with Canon 500 F4 L IS with tripod and gimbal head. Settings were A/V at F4, 1/1250 at ISO 100 with exposure compensation of +1. PP included some minor cropping and some unsharp mask in PSE.
Welcome! Nice to see another newbie here. I am new to this critiquing so take everything I say with a grain of salt and wait patiently for the "big guns".
I like the angle of the incoming landing with his flaps down. I like the missing feather. I feel the image could do a bit of anti CW rotation to match the ripples in the water. I might also crop the RHS and maybe give him a bit more space in front.
I think this would look great in B&W.
Hi Owen, and welcome!! You have an awesome combination with the 7D2 and the 500!
You got a great incoming flight pose here, with good detail in the mid-tones. The brightest tones may be a little bright, but don't show as blown. My preference is to hold them down a little more (so there is a little more detail), but that's purely a matter of taste, and varies with each image. What are you using for raw conversion?
You could go above ISO 100 -- I'd try for maybe 400, with a little more aperture and shutter speed to cover more cases. With a white bird, I wouldn't generally go to +1 compensation in Av. It can be tricky, but I'd shoot a few if I could, in the ambient light, look at what they gave you and try to set a M exposure that just stopped short of blowing whites. (Use neutral settings on the camera for the JPEGs that will show on the screen, so you can rely on the blinkies for a quick look, and the camera histogram.
Look forward to seeing more from you!! And feel free to comment on others' images -- that's how we all learn. Plenty of room for opinions here!
I quite love the dark background that is the water. The pose of the bird is great also, with the wings up and the legs down.
The whites seem mostly good to me, there are a couple of bright spots that do not seem blown. Typically on a sunny day with our model camera, I will compensate negative to avoid the blinkies on white birds against dark backgrounds. They can be recovered (a little) in post too.
You may consider a little tighter crop to bring out more details of the bird (right and bottom may be best to crop if you elect to try it). Depending what you have available up top a little more room for the wing tip would be good (wouldn't want a picture frame to hide it).
Congrats on this excellent shot with a great background, and your first post here :)
Ross
Last edited by Ross Taylor; 11-23-2015 at 04:29 PM.
Great Egret Landing
