Sunday, November 29, 2009

BNC Splashing Egret


I caught this Egret splashing in a shallow tidal pool at the Baytown Nature Center this weekend. The wind was completely still which apparently created ideal fishing conditions for shore birds.

5 comments:

Cindi said...

A great capture! And very sharp too. (and something about no head and no feet reminds me of Thanksgiving....) Did you get the next moment, hopefully with a fish in his mouth? With only the water in the foreground and background, the egret stands out very well, nothing to distract here, and the sun has lit the splash so well. The water seems to have given everything a brownish cast, what was your white balance setting?

Doug Haass said...

I meant to comment on this yesterday. Good job capturing the moment it hit the water and sent droplets flying. I like all the highlights in the water drops and splash.

I too wondered about white balance. Did you shoot AWB and leave it or play around with different WB settings in RAW?

Nice shot.

Larry said...

Thanks Cindi and Doug. I'm afraid I just leave my camera on AWB. On this shot [and another I will post tomorrow] I did switch from "As Shot" to "Auto" white balance in Camera Raw because I like the warmer tones it produced.

Barry Armer said...

I really like the moment you captured in this photo Larry. Composition is nice as well.

The lighting is interesting but like Doug and Cindi pointed out it seems to have a brown cast to it that gives the photo a slightly muddy look. If you want to work with it any more you could try reducing the WB in raw to see if you can get some blue in the water and then selectively add a warming filter to just the bird. Don't know if it would work or not but might be worth a try.

Cheers!
Barry

Doug Haass said...

I think another constant here is shooting backlit. You can get some nice looks doing it, but it's hard to balance the light. It would still be nice to try the Better Beamer dialed down to -3 for some fill to see if it makes the shot pop a little more. What flash are you shooting when you do?