The dying sun bleeds through the treetops as a great white egret alights on a bare branch. I was at the Elephant Hill rookery in Jiangxi, China last month.
Device: Nikon D3S
Lens: VR 600mm F/4G
Focal Length: 600mm
Aperture: F/4
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Comp.: none
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 200
Subject Distance: 63.1 m
Photoshoppery: I wanted to tell a simple story of fiery sky, burning bush, perch, and egret. I therefore content-aware-filled a stump sticking up to the right of the main perch. Because of the uniformity of the BG, the result was nearly seamless. I removed other, smaller odd-looking branches. I tweaked the contrast and saturation to ensure that (1) any color was out of the bird and (2) the resulting color balance was as close as possible to the way it was that evening. I'm using about three-fourths of the original frame. I suppose I could have cooled the hot spots in the tree more, but the fact is that at that moment those spots were too bright for the eyes; why, therefore, misrepresent that harsh glare?







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