Birds in Florida
Back around New Years 2018, we took a family vacation down to Orlando for a visit to Disney. The girls had a lot of fun; 4 years old is a great age to run around meeting characters and going on rides, and both of the kids didn't want to go home at the end of the week.
On our final day, the flight back home wasn't until about 9 o'clock at night, so we had the day to wander around, take some photos, do some shopping and relax. In the morning I wandered down to the water and found several birds, including a great blue heron, great egrets, a snowy egret and what appears to be a little blue heron, a first sighting for me. I didn't bring my 400mm lens along on the trip, but the 70-200 + 1.4X extender worked quite well as the animals were fairly tolerant of my presence. I was satisfied with it's performance overall, and it worked well for travel.
Camera: Canon 5DmkIV with 70-200f/4IS+1.4xIII
Shooting Info: 1/640 at f/8, ISO100, -2/3 ec, 280mm
This Great Egret was hunting small fish and amphibians in the vegetation at the side of the pond (it caught a couple while I was watching). These birds are quite slow and gracefully while hunting, culminating in a final powerful strike to grab their prey. I've seen fish impaled by that long sharp beak. I used negative exposure compensation to prevent the white feathers from being completely blown out by the strong Florida sunlight. I had to bring the overall exposure back up in Lightroom to compensate.
Camera: Canon 5DmkIV with 70-200f/4IS+1.4xIII
Shooting Info: 1/320 at f/8, ISO160, -2/3 ec, 280mm
This snowy egret had just landed and was slowly wadding through the water looking for prey. I took this frame while the bird had it's head slightly turned away, allowing some light to catch it's eye. Negative exposure compensation was used again to prevent the while feathers from being overexposed.
Camera: Canon 5DmkIV with 70-200f/4IS+1.4xIII
Shooting Info: 1/400 at f/8, ISO100, -2/3 ec, 263mm
This is my first sighting of a Little Blue Heron. The bird was medium sized (smaller than a Great Blue Heron, but larger than a Green Heron) and fully extended to see above the rushes. I gave this photograph a B&W treatment because the foliage was rather brown, drab and unappealing. The photo was also processed to make the bird brighter compared to it's surroundings to bring more attention to it.
Camera: Canon 5DmkIV with 70-200f/4IS+1.4xIII
Shooting Info: 1/800 at f/7.1, ISO100, -1 ec, 280mm
I see Great Blue Herons around here somewhat frequently, but this one allowed me to get fairly close to it, so much so that I was able to get a head and shoulders portrait with some great feather detail that looks nice printed big. The large negative exposure compensation was used again to prevent the white feathers on top of it's head from blowing out and losing detail. The heron was standing at the base of a low pedestrian foot bridge and I captured this photo by hanging over the railing and holding the camera at arms length with live view. The depth of field is pretty shallow at this close distance, so this final image is a composite of two frames; the main frame is focused on it's eye combined with a second frame that had the shoulder feathers in better focus.