Sony A700~Sony70-400G@400mm~ISO1600~1/320sec~F6.3~manual exposure~HH~7-25-2010~Brazos Bend State Park, Texas~CS4
A Siren is a large legless salamander. It was close to sunset and cloudy, and I didn't have much light to work with. Usually when I see the herons catching this prey it is usually too far away or the view obstructed by vegetation, both of which I avoided here. I couldn't avoid a rather distracting background. The main problem was the lack of sufficient light. Could have upped the ISO, but above ISO 1600 seems to cause serious problems with this camera, even if the exposure is pushed. Dropping the SS not an option either since the siren was quite active. Comments and critique welcomed. regards~Bill
I forgot to mention NR on background.
Nice capture of a life and death struggle in nature. Lots of nice detail in the feathers. Subjects are sharp and in focus. Light seems to be coming from camera left and prehaps a tad behind. Not considered the optimin position but you did well with it. Along the back of the salamander and on several of the reeds the high-lights seem to be blown. Probably no way to avoid that under the given conditions without a flash. I'm wondering if the Shadows/Highlights tool couldn't be used to tone down the brightness of those highlights... or perhaps Recover in Bridge or Lightroom?
Bob made some valid points but the thing that first stuck out to me was the huge stick running right through the back of the bird's head. For ISO 1600 you did very well at eliminating any noise - the image looks clean but that BG is probably your biggest challenge besides the direction of the light. If you're any good at cloning/masking out that one branch from the BG I'd give it a go - I think then the BG will be much less problematic and the bird will carry far more of the viewer's attention.
Thanks Bob and Julie, good observations! Indeed I could eliminate branches and perform other time consuming PS work on the background, or consign the image to the "for the record" category. In any case, the light direction and blown highlights, as pointed out by Bob, seem problematic as well. In the first place a flash, under low light conditions, would cause serious problems including creating shadows, an unnaturally dark background, glowing eyes, and shiny surfaces, such as the wet siren, would look terrible. Good for fill flash purposes, like bringing detail to shadows, but that is not what we have here.
The observed "blown highlights" in the reeds, which incidentally are not blown in the RAW image, could indeed be fixed if needed. However, the highlights from the wet siren are clipped. The question is should they remain that way? Sometimes pure white does exist in nature; consider catchlights, and I would contend clipped whites are sometimes alright. Of course I shoot a lot of high key, in case you haven't noticed, and backgrounds are terribly clipped! regards~Bill
Agree about the stick, but well done considering the circumstances. I think that the more unusual and transient the subject is, especially under bad conditions, the less important technical imperfections become.
Great Blue Heron with Siren
