Here's one from yesterday. We had some wonderful diffused light in the late morning due to the weather here in SW Florida, and I came upon this fellow in what are some of the lowest water levels I have ever seen in the area I was photographing. I setup and waited until he stepped onto this seaweed covered log (he was actually quite active at 11:30 in the morning!). I love the inclusion of the environment in this image, but the branch at the lower left bothers me just a bit. Mixed emotions as to whether I should work it out of there, or adjust crop. I like the space in front of the bird, and I'm afraid that narrowing the crop will ruin environmental composition. I do have other nice images of him facing the other way, but I prefer this pose to those. Thoughts?
This was hand held with the 600mm (laying prone on the ground to get as close to eye-level as possible). Canon 1DsMII, Canon 600mm f/4L, ISO320, 1/200, f/7.1, all natual light (beautifully diffused by light cloud cover) at 11:30 AM.
Personally, I like the inclusion of bg elements in some images (Puts to bird and his place together), and everything here would be ok to me, except for the oof blob in the Lower Left corner which detracts, IMHO. Great job getting that nice low angle, and hh the 600 no less.
I'm with Grace all the way on this one. No offense Jim, but I have to respectfully disagree. I feel that sometimes the inclusion of an asthetically pleasing BG adds to the image. I don't feel this one is too busy at all, and does a good job of framing the bird in his environment. You'll be seeing a lot of these types of compositions from me (where the environemnt is included). They are intentional. The OOF branch, on the other hand, is an issue, and I'll have to deal with that. I'll probably just scrap this image, and keep one of the ones facing the other direction.
Thanks Jody - I appreciate the comments. I'm one of those weird nuts who doesn't like to color inside the lines all the time. I don't mind having someone's eyes wander away from the main subject, as long as the rest of the image is worth having them wander to :-) That may or may not be the case with this one, but I sure like trying!
I can't really use this image anyway due to the OOF limb in the foreground, but there are several others in the series that are quite nice, and will make it to the sales block. --Thanks again all.
Black Crowned Night Heron
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