Among my favorite birds are the cranes and egrets. This is a great white egret in Hermann Park, Houston, Texas. It is standing on a rock in the Japanese Garden and reminds me of Japanese scrolls I have seen with cranes painted on them. Accordingly, I have cropped it in a long vertical manner which suits not only the bird but the inspiration.
The camera, is a Nikon D3 in aperture priority mode, f/3.2, ISO 800, and a -0.7 exposure bias that probably should have been a tad lower. The negative bias was set to keep the feathers from burning out (always remember to check for this on a white bird). I had it at ISO 800 because I'd been shooting another egret in shade a moment before and wanted to capture the bird in flight when it jumped up. I could have had it lower here, but the D3 does pretty good at ISO 800. The resulting shutter speed was 1/8000 second which was certainly fast enough to freeze action on a standing bird. The lens is the AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm 1:2.8G VRII ED at focal length 200mm.
In post I cropped, added "micro contrast" to the bird only in Topaz Adjust 4, then a vignette. Adjust 4 is a great Photoshop plug-in and I find myself using it a lot. Sharpening was applied to the bird and rock.
Idea based on Vertical Limit, pages 156-157 in the book 50 Photo Projects by Lee Frost.
Beautiful Photos!
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