Snowy Egrets Behavior

[Chris Korman]

I have been away for a long while, I thought I'd share this photo I took. The egret on the left was chasing the middle egret for a least 30 minutes, I am not exactly sure why, though would be curious if anyone knows why. While the photo captured suffered from a little operator induced focus error, I feel this scene's impact might outweigh the issue. The bird's were probably over 60 feet away which resulted in a crop to about 4.7 megapixels. Tech specs: 5DMII, 400 mm f/5.6 @ F/8, ISO800, 1/1600 sec.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Chris, the distance and resulting large crop really robbed the image of detail. You could have gone with at least 1/3 stop less light, as the highlights are pretty toasty. As for the impact outweighing the technical issues, I'm not so sure. No really enough detail to make out the eyes, and they are all looking in different directions. Since you have so much canvas to work with, I would suggest an alternate crop that puts the group more toward the bottom of the frame and to the left, so the left-most bird is in the lower left corner of the frame.

[Chris Korman]

Hi Kerry,

Thank you for the critique. I might able to crop more from the bottom, though when I had initially selected this crop I saw that if included more of the top of the canvas the BG textures becomes a little too distracting so elected to include more of the receded water at the shoreline with its colors and reflection. Please correct me if I am misunderstanding: I guess you're saying the diagonal of the FG shoreline does not serve the overall image?

It would have been nice if this image played out closer to me, oh well. I guess the tension of the chase doesn't come across so much.

Thank you,

Chris.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Chris,
I like the water (color reflections), habitat and might have included more if it added to the image. Action shots are always fun and interesting. As for the reason, I do not know, could be territory or breeding thing. Subjects are in the middle of the picture too. This is not a bad thing, just thought it might be interesting starting the chase in the corner. Large crop always hurts image quality but I love the environment pics and you are telling a story with this image. Which is important in photography. Thanks for sharing and keep em coming.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Chris,

Greetings. I like the action in this image... might consider using this as a crop exercise irrespective of IQ...

For grins... an alternate crop:



(er, remember we're not looking at the IQ )

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Kerry Perkins]

Michael, I agree with you 100% and am totally on board with this being an exercise in composition, not IQ. Thank you for your repost. To me, the third bird (on the right) is just standing there with his hands in his pockets. While odd numbers of objects in images generally work better, in this case I prefer the "two shot" as they say in the broadcast world.

[Chris Korman]

Thank you Jeff, Michael and Kerry for the further discussions regarding the posted image.