American Bittern
Posting another pic of the Bittern. I just find this bird fascinating after watching it for a long period of time. Just love shooting it in it's environment. It's movements are so graceful and methodical. Don't like the marsh slightly coming out the top of his/her head.
Canon 7D - Canon 400mm - 1/200 - f5.5 - ISO 200 - slight exposure adjustment of the background
Beautiful bird, Leon. I like the head shot!
Very nice lighting and detail.
Nancy
Hi Leon -
I like these birds too. They are particularly frustrating to photograph because they blend right in with their surroundings and like to stay there. Great job finding this one!
The image is sharp with nice feather detail and I love the intent stare he has. There are a few changes I think would improve it. Overall, I think it's a bit dark. There's a shadow running across the bird's body and as you mentioned, there are environmental things coming out of the top of his head. The area above his eye looks a bit hot. Also, he could use more room to look into.
I hope you don't mind me playing around with your image. I cropped out the shadowed area, lightened the bird, cloned out the stuff above his head, extended the canvas a bit on the left, and toned down the highlights in the background and the area above his eye.
Hello Leon! They are, indeed, an interesting bird to photograph and watch. I would encourage you to wait for them to turn their head your direction or at least parallel to your camera sensor. A little lower angle so you were closer to the bird's eye level would also have made this a little stronger from a compositional sense.
I like the changes and suggestions Maureen made but with the little bit of BG that showing through I think I'd take the BG all the way to black and make it a pure portrait instead.
Work on that head turn and getting down lower and you'll have some tremendous images in no time!
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