Great White Landing 0001

[ronperkins2]

Great White Egret or Heron landing. Photo taken at 8:39 am on Anhinga Trail, in Everglades National Park, on 2/25/2012. I used a Nikon D80 with a 70 to 300 mm lens f4.5-5.6 no flash.
It was taken at 1/3200 sec @ f13 ISO 800 at a focal length of 270 mm. Spot Metering with camera set to manual. Developed in
Lightroom.

[Joseph Cala]

For starters, it's a Great White Heron. Great Egrets don't have head plumes, the bill wouldn't be so chunky, and they also lack the abundant stringy breast plumes.

You did a great job nailing the whites--good detail and not blown. The abundance of vegetation all around the bird is a little too much for me, but I think you got a nice shot with what you had available.

[ronperkins2]

Should I have cropped closer to the Great White Herron? What about the vignetting? Too much, too little? To play it safe, I used f 13. Would it have been better f 9?

[John Goldman]

Excellent capture! Composition, pose, colors, bird sharpness and very good detail in the whites, all very nice.

I would have cloned out the 2 vertical sticks behind the bird and darkened the remaining similar sticks. I would have used a larger aperture to blur the BG. For me, the BG is too focused. My guess is you really wanted to get the bird sharply focused so you went with a smaller aperture, and you did.

I'd love to get a GWH as good as you have .

[James Boland]

Overall, I like the image because of the action/behavior and the reflection. The background is busy and distracting. The aperture setting depends on what you are trying to do with the image. It would be a shame not to capture the image because of a busy background. Sometimes you gotta go with what you've got.

[Ian Cassell]

Ron, because of the contrast between the white of the heron and the green of the BG, I don't mind seeing the BG in focus for this one. I would clone out the two brown sticks over his back/head and maybe the ones near the bird's right wingtip, but otherwise I really like this one.

[Cathy McEntee]

Nice job. Love the pose and all the detail in the feathers. I would probably get rid of
some of the dry reeds in the background .

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Ron, nice action, color, and exposure - techs look solid. As you can tell by the comments, it is the environment that could be improved. I agree that it would be worth the effort to do some pruning and cleanup of this image. The bird is really handsome and I love the regal pose. Thanks for sharing!

[Ian Cassell]

Quick question for Joseph -- Is there really a "Great White Heron"? Isn't that just a color variant of a GBH?

[Kerry Perkins]

I agree with Ian here, the white morph of the GBH was once classified as a separate species, the Great White Heron. It is now classified as a sub-species of the Great Blue Heron and referred to as the white morph of same. The yellow legs also help in the identification, as the Great Egret has black legs.