This is the image I tried to post unsuccessfully a while back. Last March, in the Ding Darling NWR, this brilliant green moss lined the banks and bottoms of the waterways for just a couple of weeks. It became a nice backdrop for quite a few of my images from that month. This one always stood out to me. Shot with a Canon ElanII, with 300L/4.0 IS lens at 500/f8.

Thank you in advance for all comments. Rob

-- Robert Pailes (rpailes@peganet.com), November 17, 1998

Answers

I like this shot Rob. At first I thought there must be something wrong on the background saturation but you say the moss was that bright,ok. The only other thing for me is that the green being sharp in the foreground and soft in the back. My eye would like to be that same throughout the background either soft or sharp. My 2 cents and thanks for the image.

-- Micheal Kelly (Mkelly@nospam.health.state.ak.us), November 18, 1998.

Wow, this is a really beautiful image w/ strong colors! Dark background, then a bright darker green, then the regal Egret!

The blurred background, I think, leads the viewer to the Egret's eyes and so it works here. It would have been nice also to have a background that was in focus for this picture as mentioned above. Another nit pick would be seeing part of a reflection of the egret in the water but not the rest.

Wonderful picture.

-- Andy Matinog (nonoboy@idiom.com), November 18, 1998.

I think it could be slightly improved by putting the moss behind the whole bird rather than sperating the head from the body with the mossy background. I also think more or less DOF could have improved this image. I say all this but it is still has great simlplicity and obvious though behind it. tait

-- Tait Stangl (taits@usa.net), November 20, 1998.

I like the fact that the head sticks out above the moss, it keeps the bird distinct from the big moss element...perhaps it would have been better if the head was even higher, but with that crook in the neck, it's hard to say. I'm somewhat ambivalent about the partial reflection in the water, as well as the legs disappearing into the blackness of the water.

Very nice image, good job holding the detail in the feathers...what was the lighting like?

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), November 20, 1998.

Thank you everyone for the comments. I must agree with the idea that the image might be better with more DOF. I have to admit that when I took the shot, I was interested in the green color and the circle it created within the image. I also wasn't sure if the water would go as dark as it did, which I wanted. I easily could have closed down the aperture though and still shot at 90 or 125 and had the rear of the image in focus. I think I would have liked it better this way as well. Thanks for the advice.

-- Rob Pailes (rpailes@peganet.com), November 20, 1998.

I think that the above comments pretty much covers it, but I'd like to add one thing. I think the image would look great if shot in vertical format, allowing more reflection of the bird to go in. It's still a great shot though.

-- Fredrik Mvrk (fmork@yahoo.com), November 24, 1998.