Great Egret
by Dennis Plank
Fishing for minnows in one of the canals at Ridgefield. There were two of them working a canal along the main road early in the afternoon, so some pretty harsh light, though our latitude keeps it down to a tolerable level this time of year. I brought down the highlights a bit to bring out texture in the plumage and added a little warmth with the color temperature in ACR. This bird was close enough that I ended up grabbing the 5Diii with a 70-200 lens in order to get the reflection in when it changed poses. I might have been able to get away with the 300, but it was on another body with a crop factor, and I didn't think of swapping them.
5Diii, 70-200mm f4 ISL@200, Hand held braced on bean bag in truck window, f7.1, 1/3200, iso400, Av mode, -1/1/3 stop compensation for the bright white bird. Processed in ACR and CS6 (Haven't gotten all the processing down in LR yet). Cropped to 10.4MP and removed a couple of oof foreground grass stems that were unduly distracting. Taken February 1st at 12:57 pm, Ridgefield NWR.
Your comments and criticisms are always appreciated.
Thanks for looking,
Comments
8 commentsThis is a great pose, but the whits are a bit of a problem. Have you tried using shadows and highlights, gentle adjustments i.e less than 10 on highlights seem to work and perhaps some negative midtone contrast. Hard to tell on the small JPEG but certainly worth a try
Nice details and the exposure's good, just needs a very slight tweak is all
Ray
David