{"id":166132,"date":"2025-01-05T06:07:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T13:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=166132"},"modified":"2025-01-05T07:23:12","modified_gmt":"2025-01-05T14:23:12","slug":"great-blue-heron-in-falling-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/05\/great-blue-heron-in-falling-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Blue Heron In Falling Snow"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always enjoyed the effects that falling snow or rain can have on my photos but all too often the snowflakes or raindrops can’t be seen in photographs. Or if they can be seen, they’re barely visible.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning we had our first significant snowstorm of the season so despite the poor light I decided to take my chances and see if I could find any birds to photograph in the falling snow.<\/p>\n

After a while I got more snow than I bargained for.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 2500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This Great Blue Heron was the first bird I found. ‘He’ was fishing in the typical dead silence of falling snow and I was pleasantly surprised that in this setting the snowflakes were highly visible.<\/p>\n

However, the pond was lined with tall emergent vegetation that I had to attempt to shoot through, which I found almost impossible without getting out of focus vegetation in the foreground of my photos. The heron was walking slowly, which kept putting vegetation between us, so I had to constantly start and move my pickup in order to get even partially clear shots of him.<\/p>\n

The other problem was that he was too close, so I had to shoot vertically in order to get all of him comfortably in frame.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/5.6, ISO 2500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is about the only photo I got from this shooting position that didn’t have vegetation between us.<\/p>\n

So, I decided to pull my pickup forward about 30′ to a spot that looked like I might have a clearer shot, where I’d also be further away from him.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 2500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

It worked. Removing my teleconverter also helped with the distance.<\/p>\n

Now there was no vegetation between us but I was so far forward I had to twist my body in my pickup seat so I could shoot backward at an angle of about 150\u00b0 from the direction my pickup was facing. The metal rods in my back were screaming at me “You’re going to pay for this”, but I so rarely get a bird in falling snow in my viewfinder, I said to hell with it and kept photographing the heron for another 12 minutes.<\/p>\n

I doubt that the falling snow helped his fishing efforts. Here he seems to be complaining about it. Or trying to eat that snowflake in his mouth.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 2500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I think a more expansive horizontal crop of the same photo provides a better feeling for all that snow. And it was about to get worse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 3200, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Much worse. The snow became so thick for the rest of the time I was with him I could barely see him with the naked eye. And my camera kept trying to focus on the snowflakes between us so I was having a hard time getting sharp shots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 3200, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Then he appeared to complain some more about all that snow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 2500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Naturally, that was when he caught a small fish. Here he has the fish in his bill but it’s kind of hard to see. After this shot he appeared to stop fishing and didn’t do anything else interesting so I left him and headed for home.<\/p>\n

Some good news: After twisting in my pickup seat for so long I figured I’d pay for it for 2-3 days but as of this morning my back and legs feel pretty darn good, considering. First time in years I’ve been able to do that much twisting and get away with it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Eventually the falling snow was so thick it was a near-whiteout.\u00a0(7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166135,"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":[6,334,392,1094],"tags":[1095,7712,7713,311,3235],"class_list":["post-166132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-great-blue-herons","tag-ardea-herodias","tag-great-blue-heron-in-falling-snow","tag-great-blue-heron-with-a-fish","tag-utah-2","tag-whiteout"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/great-blue-heron-8909-horizontal-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Hdy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166132","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=166132"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166174,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166132\/revisions\/166174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}