Juvenile BCNH at Sunset

[Kirk Benson]

I was having a wonderful Saturday afternoon shooting Black Skimmers, Reddish Egrets, and some diving Brown Pelicans at Bolsa Chica. I had noticed this Juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron standing near the shore about 50-60 yards from me, unfortunately there wasn't any closer access to him so I didn't pay much attention. It was just a few minutes before 7:00 and the sunset light was beautiful as I looked up just in time to see him flying towards me and managed to get off a nice 7 shot sequence, I like this one best. :)

D300 | 70-300 VR @ 300MM | Manual Exposure of 1/1000s @ f/7.1 -0.7EV and Auto ISO of 320 | 90% Full Frame

Hope you enjoy, all comments are encouraged and very much appreciated. :)

Kirk

[Harshad Barve]

what a heavely lighting , nice sharp image and killer BG
loved the HA
TFS

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the soft light, sharpness, eye contact and BG. I would put the bird a bit further to the left in the frame, crop it a bit tighter and it looks as if it needs a bit CW rotation.

[Dave Barnes]

You have captured the late light well. Ditto Axel an the crop and rotation.

[arash_hazeghi]

Great shot Kirk, sharpness and colors dead on, eye contact is good and I like the red eye. another vote for tighter crop. The only way I can see this improved is that if the left wing was in full-up position so we could see more detail on the top, but still a perfect shot.

[Daniel Belasco]

Nice!
Would crop a lot tighter as the bg is overpowering.