Snowy

[Rachel Hollander]

Another one from my morning at Ding Darling on Sanibel Island. Unfortunately, it wasn't possible to get lower.

Canon 7D
100-400 @ 190mm
1/200
f 6.3
ISO 400
HH, cropped to vertical from horizontal,

C&C welcome and appreciated.

Thanks,
Rachel

[Kerry Perkins]

Rachel, you captured a nice pose, excellent head angle, and sharp eye. Your whites are pretty neutral in the bright areas but have a blue cast in the shadows which is not at all unusual but not ideal. The white birds are very difficult to expose properly and this one is overexposed. What I recommend for getting the whites in check is to experiment with underexposing the image (check your histogram) and then cheating the exposure up until you have detail in the fifth section of the histogram. Make a note of the settings and remember them for future captures. It would help us to help you if you included the shooting mode, metering method, and exposure compensation. I shoot with a 7D and the 400mm f/5.6. In bright sun like this I would be starting with 1/4000 @ f/5.6. I find that the 7D has a very fine line between good whites and blown whites so I suggest you do some experimentation in that area. I would also suggest cropping away about half of the space above the egret.

Above all, don't get discouraged! Bird photography is not easy and white birds are tough. Keep on shooting and sharing!

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks Kerry. I used evaluative metering and pushed it to the right with EC +1.0. I also tried using ACR to convert. I usually use DPP so I went back to the RAW and converted with DPP and adjusted the exposure. Here's a repost.

Please let me know if it's better.

Thanks,
Rachel

[Kerry Perkins]

Rachel, definitely better! You warmed up the color temp a bit which gives a more realistic look to both the egret and the water. This also brought out some of the lost detail in the whites. Nice job!