{"id":42901,"date":"2016-10-19T05:30:36","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T11:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=42901"},"modified":"2016-10-19T05:30:36","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T11:30:36","slug":"a-black-necked-stilt-and-the-quirkiness-of-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/19\/a-black-necked-stilt-and-the-quirkiness-of-reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"A Black-necked Stilt And The Quirkiness Of Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"

We often think of reflections of\u00a0birds in water as being\u00a0exact upside down copies\u00a0of the birds themselves but that’s\u00a0just not\u00a0the case, even when the water is as smooth as glass. “Mirror images” aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"black-necked-stilt-9535-ron-dudley\"1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/strong><\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This image of a Black-necked Stilt\u00a0taken at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge two months ago is a case in point. There are many differences\u00a0between the bird and its reflection (that are not caused by tiny disturbances in the water).<\/p>\n

Notice for example the blue space between the birds bill and its neck that doesn’t exist in the reflection. The same is true of the blue space between the wingtips of the stilt. There are other differences too but let’s focus on the eye.<\/p>\n

The eye of the actual bird has absolutely no catch light but there’s a distinct one in the reflection. The\u00a0eye is partially closed and that part of the eye that could reflect light directly\u00a0to our own eyes is hidden from view by the eyelid. But the reflection doesn’t come to us directly from the bird –\u00a0instead it comes from\u00a0a particular spot on the surface of the water. If we were viewing the bird from that spot on the water we would<\/em> see a catch light in the eye of the bird. In effect that’s what reflections allow us to do – see the bird from a different angle and contrary to common belief that angle gives us a different and distorted view of the bird.<\/p>\n

It’s as if we’re viewing the bird from the water’s surface rather than the actual position of our own eyes (or in this case, my lens).<\/p>\n

I know, I know… I pay too much attention to minutia. I think it’s in my genes.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – I’ve covered reflections in a previous post <\/a>but I thought this stilt was another good example.\u00a0Besides,\u00a0repetition is a good way to learn…<\/em><\/p>\n

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

We often think of reflections of birds in water as being exact upside down copies of the birds themselves but that’s just not the case, even when the water is as smooth as glass. “Mirror images” aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42902,"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":[6,334,708],"tags":[49,705,566,707,3163,2625],"class_list":["post-42901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-black-necked-stilts","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-black-necked-stilt","tag-catch-light","tag-himantopus-mexicanus","tag-mirror-image","tag-reflections"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/black-necked-stilt-9535-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-b9X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42901","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=42901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}