Great Blue Heron near Lake Simcoe shore

[accwai]

Found this one while going through some old captures:



The bird was inside the canal system of Lagoon City, near the town of Brechin.

[Shortsighted]

It looks as serenely satisfied with itself as you must have felt having photographed it.
I wonder how long it was poised waiting to be discovered. Profound contrast too. If
it was any crisper it would be seriously brittle and might likely shatter at the slightest
disturbance. It is real, isn't it?

[Ally]

It looks as serenely satisfied with itself as you must have felt having photographed it.
I wonder how long it was poised waiting to be discovered. Profound contrast too. If
it was any crisper it would be seriously brittle and might likely shatter at the slightest
disturbance. It is real, isn't it?

How long does it take for someone to be this good?

[Shortsighted]

10,000 hours.
It also helps to spend a lot of time at the right place and to have the
right gear needed to capture a subject that comes along and to be able
to manipulate that gear by reflex. The GBH was definitely close enough
for the lens to put a lot of pixels on it, otherwise this awesome level
of detail would not be present. Excellent glass held by an excellent
photographer that recognized excellent light falling on a most excellent
subject. A promo shot from Accwai's Excellent Adventure.

[orchidpoet]

Great capture of the great blue heron!

Last month, I was shooting a time lapse video at night. A heron was fishing near me, about 20-30 meters away. I left after 1 am, the heron was still there. Are they getting any sleep at all?

The next day, I found a heron perching on the dock at Jackson's Point.

[accwai]

It looks as serenely satisfied with itself as you must have felt having photographed it. I wonder how long it was poised waiting to be discovered. Profound contrast too. If it was any crisper it would be seriously brittle and might likely shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is real, isn't it?

Actually it wasn't serene at all. The captures on file show it to be pacing up and down the log that it's standing on in the photo. Some of the poses on file were *really* bizarre One moment of sanity in the incessant stream of life

Great capture of the great blue heron!

Last month, I was shooting a time lapse video at night. A heron was fishing near me, about 20-30 meters away. I left after 1 am, the heron was still there. Are they getting any sleep at all?

The next day, I found a heron perching on the dock at Jackson's Point.

Thank Yes, looks like they tend to stalk an area for a while. The EXIF on the photo says 1:39PM. People up and down the canal had talked about it since the day before if I recall. I'm about to post another GBH photo. This one I've heard about from the day before. It showed briefly at the canal but disappeared into a rather inaccessible marsh area. The next morning, I was at a nearby beach area looking for shorebirds and it just flew in and plopped itself down near me.

10,000 hours.

The monitor on my photo editing computer for more than 10 years reports an uptime of a little below 1,800 hours. That isn't all processing time as there is a non-trivial portion of cataloging, geotagging and some focus stacking on high macros. And I probably spent a lot less time really shooting than processing. So it can't be 5,000, let alone 10,000 hours

It also helps to spend a lot of time at the right place and to have the right gear needed to capture a subject that comes along and to be able to manipulate that gear by reflex. The GBH was definitely close enough for the lens to put a lot of pixels on it, otherwise this awesome level of detail would not be present. Excellent glass held by an excellent photographer that recognized excellent light falling on a most excellent subject. A promo shot from Accwai's Excellent Adventure.

Thank you very much. Be at the right place at the right time and instinctively know what to do about the situation is the start. Then you take the few best captures and commit yourself to pursue the processing relentlessly until they reach their full potential. If things don't come together in processing, you have to grit your teeth and put the piece aside. The next GBH photo I'm going to post came from a most exciting close encounter. But the color wouldn't come out right no matter what I did back then. It was most disappointing but I had no choice but to let it go. Years later, I came across way to generate camera profile that would correct some of the strangeness in the Adobe raw processor. Found the capture a few weeks back while going through old stuff. Immediately knew I should give it another try. And it works this time.

And recognizing the light is important, yes. In my case, I can play with lights in a basement still life studio. Something like this:



This helps me recognize good light when I see them outside.

[Shortsighted]

5,000 hours indeed!
Sure, that may be the case when you are the Mozart of photography but the rest of us are in for
a longer term, perhaps slightly less for good behaviour. You did not include all the hours you spent
studying light and lighting protocols. That rose shot of yours is more than a study in lighting but
rather a symphony of delicacy, or a tone poem in light. Man, do you have patience.

You must have outstanding lighting gear in your basement and I'm sure there are a kilo-hours of
time spent learning how to apply it. I won't tell you what I do in the basement but rest assured that
light plays no role in it. Although, I did once try to build a model railroad that did label me as a
subterranean and turn me into an avid troglodyte. So,I guess I can kind of relate.

Your GBH must have felt very comfortable in your presence because that was fortuitously close.
Most herons would display proximity anxiety at that range. I was able to approach a GBH a couple
of times by gradually closing the distance between us by pretending to forage, avoiding direct eye
contact therefore essentially ignoring the heron completely. Eventually it resigned itself to my
presence and we cohabitated a few square meters of space in the kind of mindless bliss one can
only enjoy with commensurate intelligence. It was quite a rush but it took a while to introduce myself
so I have been known to have patience as well. I often forget where I put it though.

[Ally]

It's getting technical again