A Golden Moment

[paul leverington]

The Story:
There are those days when the heat is uncomfortable. Then there are those days when the heat is oppressive. A day when the air hasn't even a thought of movement, humidity seems to rob your breath leaving you gasping for the next, when even shade offers little to no refuge. Only one place can give relief, and anybody and anything will do pilgrimage to find it. The water is where it's at.

So there I was in my super duper cadillac soup deville floating blind when from behind me I heard some serious splashing. Slowly I started a 180 to see what I might be in store for and amazingly there was this guy cooling his jets big time. What is happening is that he is standing on a telephone pole which has the tip of one end just out of the water(to the left out of view in this picture) and serves as an island for all manner of creatures of the pond. The rest of the pole slopes downward into the water at about a 30 degree angle till the other end hits the bottom. So this guy lands on the part out of the water, and starts walking down the pole deeper and deeper, splashing and flapping all the way till he's in as you see him here. And he stayed like this for quite some time. I probably reeled off 300 shots or so and would have gotten more if it weren't for the limited buffer and slow write of the 20D. A lot of them with copious water sprays and wing flaps. Like a duck he would dive his head into the water several times, I suppose to get the cool water running down his back, and then do a wing flap.

I was just out there--otherwise I never could have planned for this one. But as they say-- just showing up for work is 80%.

20D 600 1/2000@f8 ISO 400

Paul

[Raymond Barlow]

wow Paul, forever amazing bud, killer shot.

[Harshad Barve]

what a cool shot , lovely techs and killer settings
TFS

[Danny J Brown]

Paul - I'm loving the low-angle of the soup-deville. I gotta make me one of those. Is that a yellow-crowned night-heron? Anyways, superb subject, color tone and overall warm feel, as usual.

[Rob Drummond]

Stunning Paul - beautiful colours, really sharp and nice low perspective. maybe a touch hot on the forehead on my monitor

cheers
Rob

[Desmond Chan]

Stunning Paul - beautiful colours, really sharp and nice low perspective. maybe a touch hot on the forehead on my monitor

Agree totally with Rob !

Never seen a GBH pic like that. Good job !!

[arash_hazeghi]

Very beautiful shot, love the detail, BG and the pose, 20D RAW buffer is limited but its IQ is still top notch!

Thanks for sharing.

[Randy Stout]

Paul"

A visually simple image (simple is good), carefully composed to include the entire ripple around the bird, the arc of the feathers off the back/wing going into the water nice.

Did you include the darker right upper corner as a balance to the visual weight of the bird? My first thought was to even out the luminosity compared to the rest of the background, but you rarely do things by chance in your compositions, so curious about your thought process there.

Well crafted.

Randy

[Kiran Poonacha]

looks like a monk taking Dip, loved details and angle here. the water colours adds well to this congrats...

[paul leverington]

Paul"

A visually simple image (simple is good), carefully composed to include the entire ripple around the bird, the arc of the feathers off the back/wing going into the water nice.

Did you include the darker right upper corner as a balance to the visual weight of the bird? My first thought was to even out the luminosity compared to the rest of the background, but you rarely do things by chance in your compositions, so curious about your thought process there.

Well crafted.

Randy

Your quite correct as far as the darker area adding some weight to the right side to help balance the bird on the left. The bird being right on the center of the frame with the front of his breast needs less to be counterbalanced then he would have if he were further to the left, so the dark area really helps to do this just about right. If it wasn't there, I suppose one could add a bit more canvas to the right to increase the weight of the right, but if there was nothing but smooth tone and color in that area as here--that wouldn't be the best option. Plus the line drawn from the bird to that area is an implied diagonal and adds a bit of dynamic to the shot. I would do something like darkening that corner with some work in PS if it were necessary for comp--but in this shot I didn't have to. The darker area was there in the scene already and got included because it worked.

Paul

[paul leverington]

Paul - I'm loving the low-angle of the soup-deville. I gotta make me one of those. Is that a yellow-crowned night-heron? Anyways, superb subject, color tone and overall warm feel, as usual.

Danny--the bird is an adult great blue heron.

Paul

[paul leverington]

Stunning Paul - beautiful colours, really sharp and nice low perspective. maybe a touch hot on the forehead on my monitor

cheers
Rob

I checked the whites and there are no pixels hotter than 250 from what I can tell but I also thought there was a bit too much loss of detail in that area. Since this was developed in 2005, I might have to go back and send it through one of the more modern developing programs that would allow me to pick up some more detail in those whites. Good spot Rob.

Paul

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Paul....absolutely stunning image. great advertisement for bird photography. The color combination, low angle, sharpness, BG...nothing not to take hats off. This one's a winner Sir.

KD

[Morkel Erasmus]

this is very nice - you used the moment very well...great mood, sharpness and killer composition

[denise ippolito]

Paul, Very unique comp. for a GBH. I love it. Beautiful details and pose. Very nicely done.

[Danny Laredo]

Paul, this is really sweet. Love the moment you cpatured here and the colors are fantastic.