Black-crowned night heron
[Yes, that famous CA trip again]
I have read my good share of books, texts and posts about photography and bird photography over the last year since I purchased my camera kit. I have to admit that each time, I pretty much always skipped over sections about close-up shots and portraits. Why? Pretty much because I thought that there was no way I would ever get close enough to a bird unless I managed to get a 1200mm + 2x, and even then, birds would always still be too scared far away from me and that me spotting a bird close enough for such a photograph is something that would never happen.
Then Lake Balboa happened.
Lake Balboa to me is pretty much the Ardeidae equivalent of McDonalds for gulls. You literally have egrets, night-herons, coots (yeah, you never saw that one coming), crackles, cormorants and even more within "kick distance". Add to the lot Osprey's diving within 20 feet (Of course, you never see these coming, and when you do, they are going away from you. The only "decent" shot I got of one might actually be the frontpage of my future book "P-A Fortin's Bird Butts of North America").
Anyway, point is: there are alot of these birds, and they get very very close. I almost tripped over a Snowy. The challenge however is to get a decent background, since there are alot of man-made structures there, and alot of people fishing and just walking by.
I got tons of close-up shots of great egrets, snowy's and bcnh's, but I think this one if my favorite. I have almost an exact copy of this image of a juvenile, but since Ian Cassell posted a picture of a juvy earlier today, well, I decided to go for something a bit different.
As I said, since I pretty much skipped every bit of theory about close-up shots, I really went on this one with my gut feeling. Maybe I should have left more room in front of the bill, maybe I should have included more of the body, I actually don't know. What I do know however is that I really like this image.
Canon 60D, 100-400mm @ 400, f/5.6, 1/1000, ISO 400, no crop (!!!). Subject distance was 4m according to exif.
Added a tiny bit of exposure in Lightroom. Then in PS I cleaned a bit of dust on the feathers and a weird tiny red spot on the bill. I also removed a weird reflection in the eye. Beside that, NR on the background and a bit of sharpening on the bird (40% smart sharpen).
I thought about trying to remove the reddish cast on the feathers due to the late-day lighting, but I actually liked it as well so I decided to leave it untouched.
And I learned on Friday that I might be "forced" by my boss again to return to this area in 2 months...
