{"id":11619,"date":"2013-01-18T05:59:22","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T12:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=11619"},"modified":"2013-01-18T05:59:22","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T12:59:22","slug":"a-compositional-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/18\/a-compositional-conundrum\/","title":{"rendered":"A Compositional Conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

I intended this post to be a single image for my “Just A Shot That I Like” feature.\u00a0 It didn’t turn out that way.<\/p>\n

Six days ago I found this Great Blue Heron on the edge of a small, partially frozen creek with an almost vertical snow bank\u00a0directly behind and very close to\u00a0the bird.\u00a0 The\u00a0heron was patient with me and I was close so I tried a variety of compositions using my 500 mm and 100-400 mm lenses.\u00a0 The incredibly fast shutter speeds were because of the bright snow and my forgetfulness in adjusting settings as I was juggling two cameras and lenses.<\/p>\n

In the end I couldn’t decide which composition I preferred so I’m presenting three of them here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0This relatively tight vertical shows good\u00a0detail on the bird and I like the close view of the swirly marks on the snow behind the heron made by\u00a0a wing as it landed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 100 – 400\u00a0@ 400mm, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Some folks gravitate toward whole-bird reflections so I’m also including this composition.\u00a0 Ideally I’d prefer the bird to be slightly further\u00a0left in the frame but cropping off the left makes the\u00a0image too narrow vertically for my tastes and I have no more room on the right (image was taken vertically and is\u00a0close to\u00a0full frame).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n

1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 100 – 400 @ 400mm, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A horizontal composition with the heron slightly smaller in the frame shows more of the snowy setting, including the creek and the snow that fell away from the vertical bank as the bird landed.<\/p>\n

I’m still undecided about which composition I prefer so, typical of me when faced with a difficult decision, I waffle and present all three…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PS – At the last minute I decided to include this image to show you the price I paid for shooting vertically when the\u00a0heron took off.\u00a0\u00a0 Compositionally there’s nothing\u00a0I can do to salvage the shot (which is full frame as presented).<\/em><\/p>\n

\"great<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I intended this post to be a single image for my “Just A Shot That I Like” feature.\u00a0 It didn’t turn out that way. Six days ago I found this Great Blue Heron on the edge of a small, partially frozen creek with an almost vertical snow bank\u00a0directly behind and very close to\u00a0the bird.\u00a0 The\u00a0heron was patient with me and I was close so I tried a variety of compositions using my 500 mm and 100-400 mm lenses.\u00a0 The incredibly fast shutter speeds were because of the bright snow and my forgetfulness in adjusting settings as I was juggling two cameras and lenses. In the end I couldn’t decide which composition I preferred so I’m presenting three of them here.     \u00a01\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, natural light \u00a0This relatively tight vertical shows good\u00a0detail on the bird and I like the close view of the swirly marks on the snow behind the heron made by\u00a0a wing as it landed.     \u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 100 – 400\u00a0@ 400mm, natural light Some folks gravitate toward whole-bird reflections so I’m also including this composition.\u00a0 Ideally I’d prefer the bird to be slightly further\u00a0left in the frame but cropping off the left makes the\u00a0image too narrow vertically for my tastes and I have no more room on the right (image was taken vertically and is\u00a0close to\u00a0full frame).     1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 100 – 400 @ 400mm, natural light A horizontal composition with the heron slightly smaller in the frame shows more of the…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,1094],"tags":[1095,916,712,591,282,286],"class_list":["post-11619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-great-blue-herons","tag-ardea-herodias","tag-composition","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-reflection","tag-shutter-speed","tag-snow"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-31p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}