Photographer’s Notes • We live near a lake and the Great Blue Herons are our favorite birds. When they take off, they extend their neck until they get up to full cruise speed and then retract it for normal flight. Same on landing, they extend their neck as they slow and finally touch down.
• I’ve been trying to catch them at take-off in good light with my long lens. This turns out to be a harder combination to pull off than it might sound. I was given some good advice once about nature photography, “Learn nature’s ways and position yourself to catch nature being natural.” So that’s what I did here. The Heron favors a certain dock near us. So each time I saw him land, I would grab my camera, run down, and wait (and wait) until he took off so I could catch him in flight.
• Catching the bird in flight with the right camera settings was the hard part. I did very very little by way of post processing. I have perhaps 200 attempts. In my view, this is the best (that also conveys the notion of motion blur). Enjoy
Post Processing • Convert from RAW (Nikon Capture)
• Remove Distraction (Clone Tool)
• Sharpen (Lab Color Method)
• Crop
• Color Correct (Curves)
• Darken Water (Curves)
• Increase Saturation (Hue/Saturation)
• Brighten Bird (Brightness/Contrast)
• Crop further
• Save for Web
Camera Data • Nikon D200
• 2006/06/24 08:30:38.4
• RAW (12-bit)
• Image Size: Large (3872 x 2592)
• Color
• Lens: VR 70-200mm F/2.8 G
• Focal Length: 180mm
• Exposure Mode: Shutter Priority
• Metering Mode: Spot
• 1/100 sec - F/10
• Exposure Comp.: 0 EV
• Sensitivity: ISO 200
• Optimize Image: Vivid
• White Balance: Auto
• AF Mode: AF-C
• Flash Sync Mode: Not Attached
• Color Mode: Mode III (Adobe RGB)
• Tone Comp.: Normal
• Hue Adjustment: 0°
• Saturation: Enhanced
• Sharpening: Medium high
• Image Comment:
• Long Exposure NR: Off
• High ISO NR: Off
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Place: 91 out of 177 Avg (all users): 5.3769 Avg (commenters): 5.4000 Avg (participants): 5.0488 Avg (non-participants): 5.6068 Views since voting: 995 Views during voting: 328 Votes: 199 Comments: 6 Favorites: 0
Good job with the straightforward composition and colors. I like both of those aspects. However, there is too much Neat Image for my taste and bird seems more out of focus than motion-blurred. The color of the water is very nice.
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