![\"black-crowned](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/black-crowned-night-heron-3314-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI believe that\u00a0many folks think that when there’s a reflection of a photo subject on the surface of water that reflection is an exact upside-down version of the way we see the subject itself (unless the reflection is disturbed by irregularities on the water surface). That’s really not the case.<\/p>\n
A reflection occurs when light bounces off of an object (a bird for example), strikes the water surface and then travels to our eyes. What we see in the reflection is slightly different from what we see in the\u00a0bird because the angle of light from the reflection to our eyes\u00a0isn’t the same as it is from the bird itself. It’s difficult to explain without visual aids so I’ll use two images I took yesterday morning at Bear River MBR.<\/p>\n
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\u00a01\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n At first glance it may appear that the reflection from this juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron is an exact upside down version of the\u00a0actual bird and its background but it isn’t. That fact is most easily seen here when we notice that there’s a small rock immediately above the head of the heron that is nowhere to be seen in the reflection. Think of it this way – what we’re actually seeing in the reflection is what we would see if our eyeballs were floating on the surface of the water where the reflection is.\u00a0From that angle the rock would not be seen above the head of the bird.<\/p>\n Notice that we also see more of the underside plumage of the\u00a0heron between the legs and tail in the reflection than we do in the bird itself. There are other more subtle differences too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here’s another example that involves the bird\u00a0more than the background. Notice that in the reflection we see about\u00a0twice as much of the Snowy Egret’s beak than we do in the bird\u00a0itself. That’s because the bird is reflected from below (where our imaginary eyeballs are)\u00a0and at that angle we can see further up into the nooks and crannies of the plumage where the tip of the bill is.<\/p>\n Much ado about nothing perhaps but I believe the more we understand about our images the better. All this makes me think about artists who may\u00a0paint or draw reflections and the things they must take into account if they want to make their work look realistic.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I believe that many folks think that when there’s a reflection of a photo subject on the surface of water that reflection is an exact upside-down version of the subject itself (unless the reflection is disturbed by irregularities on the water surface). That’s really not the case.<\/p>\n![\"snowy](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/snowy-egret-3031b-ron-dudley-Recovered.jpg\")
\u00a01\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n