Had the great pleasure of meeting Joseph Przybyla and his lovely wife Dottie at Gatorland while in Florida. We spent a few hours together. Lighting conditions were far from optimal while we were there. I was just thrilled to be there as it took time away from being forced to go to Universal Studios . This Great Blue Heron was posing on the boardwalk near the northern edge of the boardwalk. It was really dark behind the bird and was hardly any light back there. As soon as I saw this bird standing where it was I thought that this was the perfect situation to have an almost black background. Bird was still so I used a slow shutter speed.
Canon 1dx and Canon 500 f4 ii. Tripod mounted. ISO 1600, F7.1, SS 1/1250
Straight out of camera I had an almost black background. In DPP I upped the shadows plus 2 to get better exposure on the bird. Brought the background back down in PS but left just a hint of the background. I have some different crops of this bird where I cropped off part of his back but those beautiful back feathers were just too nice to remove.