Over the easter break I finally bit the bullet, borrowed my brother-in-law's 100-300 lens and tried my hand some bird photography.I staked this spot out(does the pipe violate the hand of man rule?) before dawn waiting for an Intermediate Egret (Snowy Egret look-a-like) that uses this spot as a fishing platform. He didn't turn up but this White Faced Egret did.The scan has really burned the highlights out in the background and I was so busy trying to exclude as much of the pipe as I could that I didn't notice that I had cropped the toes.

-- Sean Corley (corley@plpk.uq.edu.au), May 13, 1999

Answers

There's an interesting lens flare artifact across the bird's feet or is that again an effect of the scan. I really like images like this with nice DOF on water with backlighting - how far away from the bird were you? Was this AM or PM? Any filters?

-- Chris Pencis (cpencis@yahoo.com), May 13, 1999.

Sean, Minus the flare problem the bird is nicely posed and well exposed. I do have one comment though: I'm not usually one to complain about "bokeh", but this lens (or is it the scan?) seems to have bad bokeh. The background highlights are distracting and doubled and they kind of draw your attention away from the bird. You did a good job minimizing the impact of the pipe though.

-- Lanier Benkard (lanierb@leland.stanford.edu), May 13, 1999.

This is the nicest egret (or heron, for that matter) that I've seen in this group.

Because he's perched on a metal fence or rail, it "seems" to violate the "hand of man" rules for the forum though, if you subscribe to strict interpretation.

The out of focus foliage in front of the feet doen't bother me as much as the fact the the one foot has been cropped off, but that's just a minor nitpick.

Cheers,

Keith

-- Keith Clark (ClarkPhotography@spiritone.com), May 13, 1999.

I liked too much that photo too ... but that flare ...

-- Charles Dias (deepblue97a@hotmail.com), May 13, 1999.

Thanks for the responses.Keith is right. The 'flare' is actually an out of focus leaf which I couldn't remove without going for a swim.The shot was taken just after sunrise from about 15ft away (300@5.6)using velvia but no filters.Pardon my ignorance but what is 'bokeh'? I was trying a new place for scanning and I am not overly happy with the results.There is a lot more subtley in the lighting on the slide And the background on this and some other scans seems slightly strange.

-- Sean Corley (corley@plpk.uq.edu.au), May 13, 1999.

Excellent piece of work ! You have got all the details of the bird. The out of focus leaf is no concern. Not disturbing the bird and getting the details are more important. Good job!

-- Rajesh Mohan (rmohan26@hotmail.com), May 14, 1999.

Oh....my God. Wow. So beautiful. Selling prints?

-- Marcy Young (marcy.young@cnalife.com), May 17, 1999.