About the Image(s)

About: Snowy Egrets are relatively common at the local park I photograph at, so I try to be on the lookout for opportunities to capture something different than the many photos of them I already have. I love the way that backlight emphasizes their showy feather displays when they’re chasing off other birds. I liked the way that the clump of grass sort of mimics the raised feathers and gives a compositional counterpoint to the bird. As usual for this type of situation, I went to full manual exposure mode and took test shots to dial in the look I wanted. Then kept shooting with those settings.

Processing: I did clean up a couple of the bigger bright spots, but opted to leave the smaller ones- should I clean them up, too? Other than the crop, processing was minimal- just a tweak on the levels tool to increase contrast, and small reduction in the highlight slider. No exposure adjustment.

Nikon Z8, 600mm, 1/2000 f/6.3 ISO640