Hunting Bittern

[Lesley van Loo]

Made this shot last winter when there were great opportunities to photograph this normally shy bird.
Made it in the late light and choose deliberately to leave my converter on mij camera for a portrait.

on the right side of the photo you can see a little bit of the ice that was on the water.
maybe some people don't like the reed in front of the beak, but in my opinion it represents a bit of the habitat and because it is sharp (enough) I don't think it is disturbing the image, but all other opinions are welome :-)

kind regards
Lesley

[Daniel Cadieux]

I'm really liking this one alot. Very intimate view, and in this case I am OK with the busy setting as well as the looking away HA (which is a rare like for me!). I love the bit of ice at right. The only thing I would do is crop at bottom to rid the OOF smudge running along the bottom edge.

P.S. Do not forget to post the techs ;-)

[Tony Whitehead]

Love the spotlight effect on the head and reflection. Texture of the plumage and ice are great.

[Michael Hogan]

Lesley,

I think this is a lovely image and I would echo Daniel's comments. It think the looking away HA works because of the reflection. I would like to see the image without the reed in front (for comparison) but I think you are right, and the image as an entity works extremely well.

TFS

Michael

[Lesley van Loo]

Hi,

thanks for the comments.
I agree too crop of a bit of the bottom, at home I've got this one on the wall that is like that (a more panorama like picture) :-)

I also agree that the looking away HA works because of the reflection, that's why I explicit wanted a potrait, because when it is further away with this angle it wouldn't work this good.
The eyes of a bittern are a bit strange positioned in the head, more in the front than in the side (see pic under here (which is a bit to yellow:-)), when hunting they keep there head a bit diagonal on the water so you mostly look at the eye that he is not hunting with or otherwise you get this looking away HA, but because of this you get a more concentrated look on your photo.

I hope everybody understands my (very long) story (haha:-)

hereby the exif: ISO 400, F8, 1/320, -1.3.
canon 1D mkIII with 500mm F4 L IS with canon 1.4x extender handheld.

[Gal Shon]

I agree with Tony's comments.
Just wish that the grass crossing the bill wasn't there.