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<\/p>\nIn the field bird photographers often have to make snap decisions.\u00a0 Sometimes we make the best choice\u00a0and sometimes we don’t.<\/p>\n
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\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc,\u00a0\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Three weeks ago I came across this Great Blue Heron perched at the top of a tree at Farmington Bay WMA.\u00a0 I was\u00a0marginally too close to shoot horizontally (this version is full frame vertically) and being the greedy photographer that I am I wanted both perched and possible take-off shots so these were my choices:<\/p>\n I thought about it for about 3 seconds and chose the second option.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I got in a couple of vertical shots\u00a0but the heron chose that moment to take off so I didn’t have time to switch to horizontal.\u00a0\u00a0I was very lucky to get three shots of the bird in the air without clipping\u00a0anything but because I was shooting vertically\u00a0I had no room for composition in front of the heron.\u00a0 None.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Once again I’m faced with choices (at least I have the time to truly think about it this time).\u00a0 I can trash three otherwise acceptable shots or I can add canvas in front of the heron to improve the composition.\u00a0 I chose the latter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n So each of these last three images has canvas added.<\/p>\n In the end there probably was no perfect choice to make in the field in this instance, even in hindsight,\u00a0because the heron just didn’t give me enough time.\u00a0 Bird photographers often shoot on a wing (literally) and a prayer (either literally or\u00a0figuratively) and there’s just no changing that.<\/p>\n As I often say, bird photography isn’t easy…<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n An unrelated note:\u00a0 For some time now many folks who use Sophos Antivirus Software have been unable to access my blog.\u00a0 Sophos was giving a false positive for malware and denying access.\u00a0 I\u00a0knew it was a false positive because only Sophos users had the problem and we ran 6 independent scans on both my blog and my server for viruses and malware and they came up clean every time.\u00a0 Sophos simply ignored our first request to reevaluate but\u00a0yesterday out of deep\u00a0frustration I contacted them again and within a couple of hours the problem was fixed.\u00a0 Please let me know if there are any issues like this in the future – for a while I didn’t even know it was happening.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the field bird photographers often have to make snap decisions. Sometimes we make the best choice and sometimes we don’t.<\/p>\n\n
continue to shoot horizontally where I really didn’t have quite\u00a0enough vertical room in the frame for the perched\u00a0bird but if it took off I had a better chance to avoid clipping body parts<\/div>\n<\/li>\ntake a few shots vertically and then switch to horizontal if the bird gave me time to do both before taking off<\/div>\n<\/li>\ntake a few shots vertically and then remove my tc to give me the best chance to avoid clipping\u00a0if the bird took off.\u00a0 This option takes me about 5 seconds\u00a0(an eternity when it comes to unpredictable birds)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n![\"great](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/great-blue-heron-7662-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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