An Egret's Regret (Composite)

I like the mood and atmosphere. Nice tones, reflection and light as well, excellent composition. Wonderful picture from you again. Thank you for sharing! Best regards.

Gunnar: thank you for your kind comment!

 

A quick story. The above really is in my backyard. I've taken dozens (if not more) of shots of the egrets that come to feed in the cove and I've never been happy with any of them. The stark whiteness of the birds and the invariably dark backgrounds made for an exposure nightmare. Get one right and the other would be wrong. Bracketing was usually defeated by movement of the water, the reeds and the birds themselves. The above, shot at 6:00 am on a stormy morning, finally worked and it came as a happy surprise especially after not shooting anything for a few months due to an illness in the family. So, I finally have my egret shot!

Indeed perfect exposure, fantastic light, colors, and mood. The small bright bird in this lowkey scene is a wonderful motif, and you placed him/her just right. Did you work with masking or photomatix ? Just curious

I admire your style, you entice the viewer with a velvet glove of tranquility.

Carsten & Tim: As always, I am grateful for your comments.

 

Carsten, in answer to your question, I just used a mask to blend the two shots, supplemented by some cloning of the top reeds using a grasses brush. I've attached the bottom, base shot. The CR2 version is without any adjustment and looks awful because it was taken with a +1/3 exposure bias to keep the gamma curve to the right. You can see the base of the intervening house here. The DNG is the output of DxO after optics corrections and after adjustments in Camera Raw to adjust blacks, highlights and color. This became the BG layer for the above. The sky shot (third in the series) had its own, different exposure.

Thank your very much for your comments on my last posting (Chicaozinho), my precious dog. I agree with you about the processing needs. I am not speciallist in PS I do only the essentials. Concerning your photo, I would say that it is excellent. Beautiful composition and reflections. I enjoyed very much. One day I will reach there. Congratulations. Regards, Chico do Vale. By the way, your surname Minicucci is it italian? I have a friend in Brazil with this surname.

Francisco: Yes, Minicucci is very Italian. And not common. Must be a distant branch of the family?

What a master you are, Patricia in creating a dramatically appealing scene from what seems a very ordinary-looking Raw photo. To see the possibilities in that photo (I'm glad you posted the originals so we could see what you started with) and to bring them out so spectacularly is a rare talent. If you ever decide to teach on line, sign me up!

I've always loved wildlife art, both photography and painting, and your end result here is beautiful to me.

The little point of land (sandbar? rock?) that leads my eye to the egret is a masterful compositional touch.

I also know quite a few photographers personally who do beautiful landscape and wildlife photography, but not one of them is your equal at post-shoot processing.

I hate to resort to cliches and overused terms, but this is simply stunning to me. I wish I could do this.

Jack & Jim: I really am touched by your generous comments. I do dither a bit about how far to go when "editing" images since I do not want to fool anyone. OTOH, editing skills are at least 50% of my "photographer skills" so I need to be unapologetic about using them.

 

Jack, all of my raw shots look "bad" because I am always exposing to the right. If you read the EXIF data on the above, you'd see that this was taken at 1/60, f/5.6 at ISO 400 with a+ 1/3 exposure bias. That's a pretty dark scene transformed to a bright, albeit flat frame in the raw shot because of camera mechanics. The DNG/ACR adjusted frame is actually pretty close to what was really there.

 

Jim, growing up, my family had a bible that had some wonderful images on those glossy color plates that you find in old books. The light in all of those drawings was "celestial" if depicting something good and malevolent if depicting something bad. I thought they were all quite beautiful, would look at them for hours and came to understand that was so engaging about them was the character and quality of light. I was thinking about those illustrations while working on this image.

 

Finally, I really needed this image and necessity is the mother of invention. I've been putting together images of my community (the Landing) for a photo book to give to my 15 neighbors. To preserve everyone's privacy, these will be images of things (not people) that keep identity somewhat obscure. The egrets are prominent members of the neighborhood in all but the winter months so I really needed an egret shot suitable for inclusion. As I'd noted to Gunnar, I've tried many times in the past. This time, I decided in advance to use a composite that would whisk away any background houses and use only the sky as the backdrop against the reeds and I feel lucky that it worked.