Wood Stork pair, and the tale of the HA that wouldn't.

[Daniel Cadieux]

From the same great evening as my previous stork post. These two posed together cooperatively for a long time...nice reflections in beautiful water colours, clean plumage, time to compose, recompose, align, realign, experiment with flash and other settings...but no matter what I did to attract the far bird's attention it wanted nothing to do with turning its face at least parallel to the camera's sensor. I tried pishing, snapping fingers, clapping and waving hands, talking to it, whistling, calling it names, splashing a bit of water with my foot...everything short of actually walking over to it and physically rotating its head. Nothing. I could almost hear it sort of laughing at my despair.....light was getting quite low, so I finally gave up...It did fly by me on the way out for a nice blur though!! (see OOTB)

Canon 30D + 100-400L @160mm, aperture priority, evluative metering, 1/30s., f/6.3, ISO 800, +1 EC, 580EX II flash @ -1 FEC, handheld(!), FF.

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

I had the same reaction to the back bird. My earlier post of the two together had the same challenge, he wouldn't give up a better head angle.

The light is lovely here, soft, even, well balanced ambient and flash.

I am glad your got some images with them with full shadows. I was too tight with my rig.

The only thing beside the HA, I wish the water had been a bit stiller so the reflections for this shot were stronger. I know some of our other shots had quieter water.

I will have to post another of mine from that night eventually.

Cheers

Randy

[Dumay de Boulle]

Nice comp with reflections that balance the image nicely...Not sure why but the image lacks a bit of punch also noise is quite noticeable.

[Dave Leroy]

A very interesting and pleasing composition. There seems to be more than one mirror image here.

Nice to see separation between birds and reflections.

I am with Dumay on the punch. Perhaps you had wanted to convey the softness of the evening but it does seem to be asking for a bit more pop.

Dave

[Horst Engler]

Hi,
of the pose her a great photo. Great story.

Greetings Horst

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Daniel, I am not minding that HA much. loved the water texture and comp.

[Jeff Dyck]

Beautiful image Daniel. I don't mind the head angle on the rear bird much other - the image has a nice symmetry as is. Nice job getting such a sharp image at 1/30s. What really impresses me in the is shot is the water / reflection - the blues and slight ripples look simply amazing - almost artifical in it's perfection (it makes me think of those computer generated landscapes). Really well done.