Geoff Coe's photostream  

Another image from my late-day visit to Venice Rookery last Thursday, Jan. 19. I used a tripod and a slow shutter speed, and panned with this Snowy Egret as it flew over water to the rookery island. Because the birds were flying in dappled late-day light, I used automatic exposure (shutter-priority mode) at 1/13 sec so that the exposures would be decent regardless of whether the flying subject was in sun or shade.

I'm always a little puzzled when I see photographers with pro-level tripods and long telephoto lenses packing them up a half hour before sunset. There were five or six shooters when I arrived at the Rookery at 4 PM, and all but one of them left by 5:30, when shadows began creeping up onto the rookery island. The sun didn't go down until six.

After picking up some work at my lab in Venice, I swung by Venice Rookery to check out the action. Some Great Blue Herons on nests, one with chicks. Lots of Great Egrets around too...this was the only one I saw displaying. I was able to scramble down the bank along the SW edge of the pond to a get a good vantage point.

Very nearly a full frame image, with minimal post-processing: just a bit of sharpening on the eye and beak and a small levels adjustment. Exposure (below) reckoned by giving +1 stop off the blue sky well above the egret. (For a dark bird like the Anhinga in the same light, I'd have given +1 2/3 stops, but I didn't want to risk blowing out the highlights on the white feathers.)
Tech stuff: Canon 7D, 500mm plus 2X teleconverter, 1/250 @ f/11, ISO 400. GItzo tripod and Mongoose M3.5 gimbal head. The relatively slow shutter speed was possible only because this bird held the pose so beautifully while I shot in the gorgeous but rapidly fading light.

A Great Blue Heron perches on a tall snag in late afternoon at Babcock Webb last week.

I had been photographing this Great Egret flying in against the late day sky when suddenly she / he veered left and landed in a marsh about 80 yards away.

I was happy that I was shooting with my Canon 7D; its focus tracking worked beautifully.
I had my exposure set in manual mode (+1 1/3 stop off the sky), so when the bird swooped into a shady area I knew it would be about 1- 1/2 stops underexposed, but there was no time to adjust. Later, I was able to clean up the shot easily using the exposure slider, then the noise reduction controls in Adobe Camera Raw.

If you have Photoshop CS5 and you've been using the lame-o Noise Reduction feature under the Filters menu item, stop what you're doing, go back to ACR (Browse), and click the Detail icon. That's where they're hiding this wonderful noise reduction tool. (The masking and color noise sliders are nothing short of magical.)

That done, I selected the bird and did one pass of edge sharpening, then inverted the selection and added just a bit of Gaussian blur...not enough to blur the already-blurred background appreciably, but enough to blur graininess in shadow areas and provide an additional sharpening effect on the bird. (This works in the way that viewing a middle gray tone against a white background makes it look darker.)

Tech stuff: 1/1250, f/5.6, Canon 7D, 500mm lens + 1.4x teleconverter, ISO 800. Gitzo tripod and Mongoose M3.5 gimbal head.

Seemed to be as good a time as any to mount my 24-105mm Canon L glass and try a set of bracketed exposures (+/- 1 stop) for my first HDR, created in Photoshop.