I got the prime spot today!

After missing the best spot earlier this week I got up at 3.30 am to get to the Riparian Preserve nice and early and managed to get an excellent place to catch the bird-life. The highlight for me was seeing some Snowy Egrets challenging eachother and a Great Blue Heron trying, unsuccessfully, to eat a baby turtle! One of the challenges I faced (with mixed success) was the changing light. As the sun broke above the tree line some very harsh shadows were cast across the pond, meaning that I had to constantly watch my exposure - changing ISO, shutter speed and aperture with almost every shot. I think that I will experiment with one of the automatic settings and see if there is any benefit to letting the camera make some of the decisions! Even though there were plenty of shots lost, I was very happy with the shots I did get, I had to rescue some of them using Adobe Camera Raw (my workflow can be seen in the 'Tutorials and Lessons Learned' page). Here is a small selection:

Snowy Egret (click to enlarge)





















Black-necked Stilt (click to enlarge)





















Great Blue Heron and Baby Pond Slider Turtle (click to enlarge)