This is a juvenile green heron, Butorides virescens. I have no idea what it's doing. :) It only did it this one time while I blew two rolls of film. This was taken in Florida with an N70, 70-210mm zoom at 210mm (wide open), 2x teleconverter, Kodak Elite Chrome 100, -1.7 stop fill flash. Any and all comments are welcome!

-- Joe Cheatwood (cheatwoo@ufl.edu), June 08, 1999

Answers

This looks like a nice scan on my screen. The colors are very pleasant. Two points... One is it looks like the beak and a bit of the mouth are out of focus. If so, this takes away from the action of the photo. That is, the mouth is the focus here. The second is the log to the left is a bit of a leading element that takes the eye away from the subject. Perhaps a square cropping? That blade of grass is a bit annoying, but I suppose you could not just have reached out and pulling it out of the way. Otherwise a brilliant job; a fine photo.

-- Chris Gillis (cagillis@concentric.net), June 08, 1999.

Joe, I really like this shot. The lighting and composition are great. I think the branch would be more likely to lead your eye out of the picture if you cropped it off. I like the crop. I don't have a problem with the tongue being a little out of focus, and the beak looks fine to me. The shaft of light on the bird keeps my eye focused there. Ideally it would be nice without the blade of grass, but that's Nature for you, always growing those skinny green things. Good job! Donna

-- Donna P. Bollenbach (cassidy@icubed.net), June 08, 1999.

Joe,

What a great pose you caught this guy in! That is one impressively massive gape. I've shot this same set or birds on a couple of occasions now and haven't seen any of them do anything like this. In fact, they usually don't do much of anything. Maybe its you ... do you normally elicit this sort of reaction from other wildlife? If so, I wish you'd start hanging around with me when I shoot birds more often. Nice work.

Peter

-- Peter May (peter.may@stetson.edu), June 08, 1999.

First the frog, now this! I'd like to rent you out after Peter to help me get some exciting Gator shots. Great work!

-- Larry Korhnak (lvk@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu), June 08, 1999.

Joe, you don't know what this heron is doing? It is shouting "How dare you taking my picture with a zoom/2xTC combination - get a fancy $5000 lens."

Just kidding, but seriously I think we should link this picture to all questions regarding the quality of such a combo. Not that it couldn't be sharper, but because it doesn't have to be sharper, because the subject makes up for all lack of sharpness. (BTW, I think it's sharp enough. Great shot.)

As for cropping, I would leave the black left side. Perfect for editorial text. The gras blade is a little annoying, though. The shot is worth trying to clone it out.

Congratulations and thanks for sharing.

-- Volker Stiller (stiller@biology.utah.edu), June 08, 1999.

Thanks to all of you that have commented so far. I really appreciate it! Also, just so everyone knows, my nature photo gallery can be seen at http://gnv.fdt.net/~cheatwoo/. Thanks again!

-- Joe Cheatwood (cheatwoo@ufl.edu), June 10, 1999.