![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/great-blue-heron-0740-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"great-blue-heron-0740-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nOccasionally a single element in a photo will grab me in a way that I’m willing to overlook something else that would normally put me off a little.<\/p>\n
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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @234mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Such is the case with this Great Blue Heron in flight taken yesterday morning at Farmington Bay WMA. I was so close to the bird that I was using my much smaller 100-400mm lens and even then I was zoomed back to only 234mm. At that\u00a0short focal length I had so much depth of field that the background is sharper than I usually prefer so I think it competes with the heron a little.<\/p>\n Normally with my other lens\u00a0I’d be shooting at either 800mm or 1120mm (depending on if the teleconverter was attached)\u00a0so\u00a0my DOF would be extremely shallow and the vegetation in the background would be significantly more blurred.\u00a0And that\u00a0would make the heron stand out better\u00a0from the background.<\/p>\n But I do love that shadow! Shadows of birds flying low over land are nearly always disrupted by vegetation so they aren’t\u00a0well-defined and shadows of birds flying low over water typically aren’t very\u00a0distinct, if they can be seen at all. But there’s very little vegetation below\u00a0this bird and\u00a0the water surface\u00a0is covered\u00a0with duckweed and other small\u00a0matter so the shadow is sharp and the shape is well-defined. That distinct shadow of the entire bird adds a little something to the image that I really enjoy. It reminds me a little of a pterodactyl.<\/p>\n I was actually able to get 25 photos of the heron taking off and in flight and I’ll likely post a few more of them as a series in the future.\u00a0Many of them have more interesting wing positions than this\u00a0but given the shadow on the water I think this horizontal wing position was just about perfect.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Occasionally a single element in a photo will grab me in a way that I’m willing to overlook something else that would normally put me off a little.<\/p>\n