Feathered Friend

Okay, this image was a year in the making. I have a lake behind my townhouse which draws a plethora of avian life. During the spring, summer, and fall; there are everything red-winged black birds to an amazing white bar owl that I stumbled across one evening. During the winter months, the list of available species narrows but you can regularly find white egrets and blue herons just along the shore.

Over the last year, I have occasionally ventured down to try to capture an image of these great birds. There are a few photographers on DGrin that routinely post gorgeous bird images. They make it look amazingly easy, which is somewhat deceiving seeing that birds are one of the most difficult subjects to photograph. Each time I returned from a shoot, I was disappointed with the captures.

Iso 200, f/6.3, 1/500 sec, 500mm

On Sunday morning, I walked down tot he water's edge to find two herons perched on the opposite shore, one far too out of range and the other just barely in range. I ran back to my place, loaded the Nikon D300 with the Sigma 50 - 500mm, grabbed the monopod, and headed back down to the water. I managed to get 2 shots before the great bird took to the air and left the scene. Of course when he took off, I was looking at the histogram on the LCD to determine I was clipping the highlights and managed to miss the great "take flight" shot. I'll save that for next time as I'm happy with how this image turned out.