Herons

Also taken on the countryside. I know it's just a Heron of which we have tons in the city, but well, when they fly by this close you can't say no... Taken late afternoon.

Shot late afternoon on the same day at Flevopark this time. The difference light makes... Uncropped.

It's called ballet... :) This is the story behind this shot (all the others are deleted to bring down my collection to 100): It's Winter, freezing, cold, water turned ice and the birds are having a difficult time. So I go to the park everyday with lots of food to help them. One bird I cannot feed is the Heron as they don't eat any of the regular bird food. But of course when I arrive and start laying out the stuff, they too hurry my way. And I feel awful to see them standing there and not getting any. So I was in the pet shop where I buy my bird seed and mentioned this and the lady cheerfully said: you could feed them one day old chicks. I don't know if 'one day old chicks' is the correct English term, but it's the male offspring of a chicken who's meat is not fit for human consumption and who are therefore economically useless. They are killed en masse (some 30 million a year over here). I am strongly against this. In Dutch they are called 'eendagskuikens'. However, standing in the pet shot I had to make a quick decision and thinking that those chicks in the shop's freezer were already dead and could help other birds survive, I ended up buying a bag full of them, frozen solid. I left them in my bicycle shed over night to defrost and yesterday took them to the park and fed them to the Herons. By then that solidly frozen block had of course turned into a big bag full of dead chicks. The Herons loved them though and apparently the word spread and never before have I seen so many Grey Herons in one spot! But as I was throwing the chicks unto the ice I felt a complete barbarian. What makes it even worse is that I came home with a card full of pictures. Never mind the moral dilemma, I am a bird photographer and there's some action going on! Well, tonight I looked at the pictures and processed a few. I will probably upload some more in the coming days, but here are just a few. Light was not good by the way and kept changing on me. This particular Heron was wet and his back looked muddy and I had great difficulty processing the image. It still doesn't look quite right to me.

Yes, it's a Brenizer of sorts. He was too close. About 1/3 of him fitted within the frame and with the setting so lovely with all the Autumn colours and the leaves on the grass I thought of mr. Brenizer and his method. So I focused on the eye and began taking pics. First down, then around the bird and again in a bigger circle, or rather rectangle, making sure there were ample overlaps between shots. I ended up with some 24 images that I then loaded into Photoshop. The blend was seamless and this is the result. I never quite understood the Brenizer method, or rather why you would need it and I don't think this is what it was meant for, but the method worked really well here in that I ended up with an image of the entire bird in a beautiful setting. In fact I think it looks surprisingly wonderful! :)

Taken shortly before sunset. Such lovely light. Uncropped.

Taken shortly before sunset. Not much light left.