Brede James Photography

I found this image while going through my files and looking at EXIF data over the past year (more on that later) and I thought I would post it as the first how-to. In the future all of the how-to's will be in the photo section of the blog, but for the first one, I thought I should post it here in the main section.

This photo was taken at the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge in Horicon WI, the refuge is run by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and is a wonderful place to view wildlife...especially wading birds. Anytime from early May through mid September, there is fantastic wildlife in the area. This image was taken in late August, near the end of the birding season.

Now onto the actual capture

For this image I was set up in a blind along one of the many dikes on the marsh. I had been at this location all morning, and had only seen a limited number of birds that were for the most part outside my range. I had along two long lenses, the amazing EF 600mm f4 and the also amazing EF 400mm f5.6, as well as the 1.4 teleconverter. I had both a full frame camera, and a 1.6 crop body. Even with the 1.4 tc on the cropped body with the 600 (an equivalent of 1300mm roughly) , this image was still a bit out of my range.

Being taken a bit later in the morning (around 9 am) you can see there is a bit more contrast in the image than would be preferred. This is one of the main reasons that we like to get out into the field before the sun comes up, as well as the fact that many of my wild subjects are far more active within an hour of the sun rising.

The additional light did however afford me the possibility of dialing down my ISO to 160. Which gives wonderfully clean images, usually when using long lenses, I will not even dare go below 200 or 250 and often shoot in the 400 range. Simply because of the field of view being so small on a long lens.

I shot this one at f5.6 (because of the teleconverter) which gave me a shutter speed of 1/1000, which is plenty fast, and I could have turned down the ISO even more, or dialed down a smaller aperture to get a bit more depth of field. One thing many people overlook is how deeply involved the depth of field is in properly framing your image. Many wildlife photographers get so excited to be close enough (or in this case in the presence of...I couldn't see this bird with my own eyes, I need all the glass I had out) to wildlife that they often forget what will make a great photo.

Ok so here is the EXIF data:
Exposure-1/1000 @ f5.6
ISO-160
Exposure prog- Aperture Priority
Exposure Bias- 0
Lens- EF 600mm F4 L
Body- EOS 30D

Now onto the aesthetics. Since I knew that I wouldn't be able to get a tightly framed portrait of this bird, I decided to make an image that would convey a sense of its habitat and life in the marsh. Great Blues are becoming harder and harder to find, even in an amazing place like Horicon. They are very rarely seen in groups, and even seeing two together is becoming rare. I had been in the marsh for about a week and only had seen a handful of Great Blues. This bird was no different than the others I had seen, by himself and alone. A perfect lone ranger, patrolling the marsh in search of food and peace and quiet. Overall my goal was to make an image that showed the solidarity of the Great Blues, I think that this images does a good job in achieving that goal.

I would like to point out a couple of important framing decisions that I made that greatly add to this image.
First, the position of the horizon (or in this case the water/reeds line) is very low in the frame, however there is no sky included. The exclusion of the sky makes it feel as if the marsh goes on forever, an endless sea of green. If I had included the sky that feeling would have been lost, and it would have made the image more open, and not have defined the habitat that is so important to the Blue Herons world.
Secondly, the actual position of the bird in this image is off center left. Even though the bird is looking to the left (from our position not his) I chose to put him on the left side of the frame. If I had put him in the right side of the frame, it would have given the viewer more time to connect to what he was possibly looking at, which would mean that the feeling of him being completely alone, might be lost.

Hope this is helpful and not too long to read, look for more coming soon, in the Photo section of the blog. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

You can view a large version of this photo on my flickr page @

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bredepetersen/

Thanks, and happy shooting~