This very tame juvenile Green Heron is quite the poser and performer. Allowing very close approach, it is fun to go right in and create tight portrait hunting images as it plucks minnow after minnow out of the water. Getting down low to minimise an otherwise distracting BG, and stopping down to get full details right down to the fish (and hoping for a parallel angle on the action) did the trick.
Canon 7DII + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC III, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/500s., f/9, ISO 1600, natural light, handheld, NR to the BG.
Killer shot Daniel - literally! That little minnow is done for. You've shown your skill here with the perfect DOF choice which is always hard at close range in my experience. Did you crop much for this? Tone, colour, detail and background all tops. The composition also works well. A fine piece of work.
Hi Dan, excellent eye level capture here, and great that we can see the eye of the Minnow. You have really brought out the feather detail, and that head is tack sharp.
Where do you find Green Herons that you can get close too. I have yet to see a Green Heron in SA thats lets you within 1 mile of it. Here in SA, for some reason they have changed the name of our Green Herons to Striated Heron.
Stu, there is one Green Heron at a local urban park that has been hanging out at the same spot for 3-4 weeks. By same spot, I mean literally the SAME spot, give or take a few feet! It just waits for fish or flying insects to pass by, unafraid of people approaching and walking by. At one point it hopped on a rock only three feet from me. It will leave soon as migration urges are surely tugging at it more and more, but in the meantime it is so fun to observe
Wow, incredible detail! I got some tame ones not eating fish as well, I got pics, but unfortunately they are from a boardwalk so I cannot get that nice low angle...
Another Plucked Fish - Green Heron.
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Here in SA, for some reason they have changed the name of our Green Herons to Striated Heron.
