Edmonds Great Blue Heron

[Bill Anderson]

Friday afternoon (6/27/14) Terry, Daren,and I lugged our 500L telephoto lenses down to the retention pond at the west end of the Pt. Edwards walkway, where we saw a great blue heron on the opposite side of the pond. It was not bothered by our presence and I wondered if it was the same one which watched us from the old light stand a few days earlier.

The presence of the heron bothered one of the resident male red-winged blackbirds. It not only strafed the heron, but made occasional contact as well. The action happened while I was mounting my 5DIII + 500L telephoto + 1.4x teleconverter on the tripod and I did not have time to make proper exposure settings.








The blackbird was but a minor annoyance which the heron ignored. I played around with the exposure settings, which I will talk about later.

 

[Bill Anderson]

The heron was not on a sight seeing trip but a hunting expedition.

It captured and ate a small rodent......





then continued the hunt.


It had success in finding a second rodent.

 

[Terry O]

Wow, Bill...I didn't realize that blackbird made such a definite contact!

 

[Bill Anderson]

The heron would periodically dip its prey in the water. I don't know if this was to drown the rodent or make it easier to swallow.






It took a few minutes for the heron to swallow the rodent.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Terry and I thought the heron would be full, but it continued to hunt.


The next course was sashimi in the form of a goldfish or carp.








The heron continued the hunt after we left.

 

[Bill Anderson]

The above shots were taken with the 5DIII + 500L telephoto + 1.4x teleconverter mounted on a tripod. I removed the teleconverter for a few shots, but I am not sure if any of those are on this thread.

The light was a little behind us with the sun constantly coming in and out of the clouds. Exposure settings were a real problem with light reflecting off the water and light colored, reflective objects such as the goldfish or the heron's white feathers.

I tried to solve the exposure issues by shooting in M mode with a fixed ISO. I would adjust the exposure levels using shutter speed and aperature settings. Most of the time I was shooting anywhere from 0 to -1 exposure compensation. Even then, some of the shots were still over exposed as the heron moved around and the sun peeked in and out from behind the clouds.

There was a depth of field problem when trying to get shots of the heron while keeping its reflection in the pond and the lily pad blooms in focus. For those wider angle shots, I used an aperature setting of f/16 and lowered my shutter speed accordingly. Since I was shooting on a tripod with a cable shutter release, I was not worried about motion blur.

Recently I have not been happy with Auto White Balance (AWB). For these shots I switched between sunlight and overcast settings, yet still made post processing color adjustments on my computer using Picasa.

Terry used different techniques which he may wish to discuss after posting up some of his photos...... if we have any which don't look alike.

 

[Joemeche]

Superb shots, Bill. Bravo!

 

[Terry O]

Great job, Bill.....I think my photos are essentially a duplicate of yours! I used Av mode with an ISO of 640 and f-stop of f9, and let the shutter speed vary. I also used an exposure comp of -1 1/3 to - 1 2/3 to compensate for the dark background.

The herons are pretty hard on the goldfish population of the pond


I used f9 to try to increase the depth of focus to get both the flower and bird. Unusual for me.

 

[Eric Olsson]

Super great shots! It was nice meeting you the other day Bill. I'll have to make it back down another time and hope there is a little more activity.