Great Blue Heron In The Flow

[Andrew McLachlan]

I don't get over to this forum too often, but while photographing fall color last week in Ontario's Muskoka region I found myself at Stubb's Falls in Arrowhead Provincial Park,where I encountered a very cooperative Great Blue Heron at the base of the falls, hunting in the flowing water. After shooting various images I decided to try some longer exposures to capture some bird-scapes that would show the river's movement. Not too crazy on the white froth flowing through the background water, so I applied a slight blur to make it a little more pleasing.

Look forward to comments.

Nikon D200
Nikon 80-400 VR lens @ 220mm (VR off)
ISO 100
f20 @ 1/5 second
mirror-lock

[Arthur Morris]

The bird is nice and sharp and the water looks great. The bird and the bird's head is angled away. The merge of the bird's head with the rock is the big bummer for me.... Does not look as if there was an easy way to get away from that unless you are in the middle of the stream.....

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks Arthur, much appreciated. I'll try a couple of other poses in the coming days. I have some with the head in a lower position...not ideal, but maybe better. It was a tricky spot to shoot from...lots of rocks and large, highly sloped rock at my back. To better describe my shooting location, I was crouched down to the left of the massive rock face in my Stubb's Falls OOTB post.

[Tom Rambaut]

Agree with AM's comments but do like the water blur look. This seems like a place were you can return and try to get the killer image even with the difficulty that you describe at the location.

[adrian dancy]

Adore the water....the bird looks a little over sharpened and I imagine the original is relatively soft owing to subject movement. Agree with Arthur regarding the bird's head merging. A very good effort and worth a re-visit.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks Tom and Adrian for the additional comments. The heron is sharp in the original capture as it remained dead still during the exposure.

[dankearl]

Andrew, the Heron doesn't look over sharpened to me, I agree on the merge with the rock beyond, but it is a really
good idea for a photo, the water is well done and the overall image IQ is good.