Egret Takes Flight

Gallery: AvianPosted February 1, 201176 views7 comments

This was taken two weeks ago at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge on the outer banks of North Carolina. He was flushed out by a blue heron that cooperated very nicely with my plan to get this guy to fly.

Canon 5DII, 100-400mm @ 400mm, f5.6, 1/1250 sec, ISO 640

Comments welcome - as always, more detail with the larger version

Comments

7 comments

Comment posted by Mia McPherson on February 1, 2011 at 8:27 AM

Wick,

I like the flight pose of the egret, good eye contact and the setting. One of the issues I see here is that there is a cast to the image, cyan I think. I did a screen shot of your image, brought it into PS and did an auto level on it and the results from just doing that were more realistically colored. So I would work on the WB if this were mine. The other issue is that some of the whites in the original and the one I used auto levels on are blown. If you shot this in RAW you may be able to tame those whites in ACR.

Hope that helps.

Registered on June 25, 2007, 491 Posts, 12566 Comments

Comment posted by Sally King on February 1, 2011 at 9:05 AM

The bird stands out nicely from the background. I agree with Mia about the color cast and some bright whites. Nice flight pose too though.

Registered on December 2, 2008, 416 Posts, 4450 Comments

Comment posted by Richard Teller on February 1, 2011 at 10:30 AM

Very good flight shot. I agree with Mia's comments. They are right on.

Registered on August 23, 2010, 1162 Posts, 6692 Comments

Comment posted by Ron Dudley on February 1, 2011 at 7:20 PM

Wick, The heron is sharp and I like the flight pose. Agree about the color cast though.

Registered on March 30, 2007, 437 Posts, 10915 Comments

Comment posted by Jim DeWitt on February 1, 2011 at 8:24 PM

I can't add much to what Mia said. If I had to guess, I'd say you had metering set to averaging, which set your whites too high. When shooting either very pale or very dark birds, you need to use spot metering.

Registered on August 28, 2006, 1240 Posts, 8506 Comments

Comment posted by Wick Smith on February 1, 2011 at 8:41 PM