{"id":106255,"date":"2022-01-17T05:52:34","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T12:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=106255"},"modified":"2022-01-17T06:40:18","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T13:40:18","slug":"pied-billed-grebe-in-the-most-gorgeous-water-ive-seen-in-my-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/17\/pied-billed-grebe-in-the-most-gorgeous-water-ive-seen-in-my-photos\/","title":{"rendered":"Pied-billed Grebe In The Most Gorgeous Water I’ve Seen In My Photos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, plain old water can be gorgeous – especially when it’s reflecting beautiful colors in whirly-swirly patterns and soft textures.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday morning it was 20\u00b0 when I got up so I abandoned my tentative plans to go shooting due to the soft photos I’ve been consistently getting while photographing birds from my warm pickup in cold temperatures. That problem has sorta taken the wind out of my sails.<\/p>\n<p>But when the sun came up four hours later the beautiful, though frigid, morning seduced me into trying my luck at a closer location while shooting from my tripod. That strategy solves my problem of differential temperatures causing soft shots so I decided to give it a go.<\/p>\n<p>I’m glad I did.<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"106256\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/17\/pied-billed-grebe-in-the-most-gorgeous-water-ive-seen-in-my-photos\/pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,643\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"6.3","credit":"RON DUDLEY","camera":"Canon EOS 7D Mark II","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1642324393","copyright":"","focal_length":"700","iso":"800","shutter_speed":"0.0003125","title":"","orientation":"1"}\" data-image-title=\"pied-billed grebe 8549 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley-300x214.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-106256 size-full\" title=\"pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"643\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley-768x549.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley-150x107.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This preening Pied-billed Grebe wasn’t particularly close but that wasn’t an issue because a loose crop allowed me to include more of the gorgeous water in the frame. In fact, I considered a looser crop than this to include even more of it. I’ve fallen in love with the colorful reflections I got in this photo and many others of the same grebe.<\/p>\n<p>Even though it’s a butt shot I chose to post this one, in part because of how well the grebe’s open bill and eye ring stand out.<\/p>\n<p>I can only guess where some of the reflected colors came from. The blues are reflected sky and the golds and reds are likely from phrags along the shore but I’m not sure where the dark greens came from. At this point I’m beyond caring much about the source of the colors.<\/p>\n<p>I’m just glad they’re all there.<\/p>\n<p>Ron<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><em>Notes: <\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Rotating this photo for level was tricky. To my eye the oval blue ripples need ever so slight clockwise rotation but in the end I rotated the photo based on the bird’s bill and its reflection, which is often the most reliable indicator of true level. With this particular photo neither choice seems to look quite level so for today’s presentation I settled on this version. Next time I process the image I might level for the oval blue ripples.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>During processing I didn’t manipulate anything in the photo, including colors. All I did was crop and sharpen.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>“Gorgeous” of course is in the eye of the beholder. I seldom use that term to describe my photos and I’ve used it three times in this post which gives me pause. But for my tastes, if any of my photos deserve such heavy use of that overused descriptor it’s this one.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, plain old water can be gorgeous – especially when it’s reflecting beautiful colors in whirly-swirly patterns and soft textures.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/17\/pied-billed-grebe-in-the-most-gorgeous-water-ive-seen-in-my-photos\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,334,359],"tags":[6127,251,993,255,6128,311],"class_list":["post-106255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-pied-billed-grebes","tag-beautiful-reflections-in-water","tag-pied-billed-grebe","tag-podilymbus-podiceps","tag-preening","tag-rotating-photos-for-level","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/pied-billed-grebe-8549-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-rDN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106255"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106292,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106255\/revisions\/106292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}