Part of the Horse Event cross country course involves the horse and rider transiting through a shallow water obstacle about 30 yards in length. The depth is only a few inches and there is a solid bottom. It looks to be about then yards wide. There are shallow and steep entrances/exits. And there is a fairly high jump in the middle should one want to take it.
I hung around the water obstacle for a number of photographs. Just about every participant for the day went through it a few times. Get the horses ready for the cross country season. For the most part, this exercise was uneventful. Except. One rider wanted to take her horse in the water from the steeper step. And the horse wanted no part of that. Instead the horse stretched its neck down below its feet to drink the water. Almost pulled the rider right over. Would have been funny, but not flattering. No pictures.
I have a number of images of horses moving through the water at a quick pace. I like how the water is disturbed and somewhat flying around. Splashing.
While I was there, there were two riders who took the jump. This is one of them.
There is water flying everywhere. The only eye trick that gets to me is something I can't fix. The horse has shin guards that are black with a blue accent. Just looks odd (to me) in the image where it is. The sun is right, there are greens and blues. Did I say I liked the way the water was splashed?
I started the day shooting at a higher aperture, f/6.4. later in the day I opened up to f/5 to see if bokeh was going to be an issue at a later date. The evergreen trees just at the end of the water are OK. To me, this is acceptable DOF. The more open I can be, the better. The speed a a bit high, but I wasn't going for any motion effect. ISO 450 is right in the acceptable range.
This was a pretty simple edit. The environment was good. Lots of good light to work with. Or not work with 'cause it was there. No light compensations. One of the few times it hit it just right.
I spent most of today culling down the number of images from yesterday's adventure from just over 500 to about 110. Something I can work with. Since my philosophy is 'spray and pray', I have multiple shots around each image that I saved. I'm looking for the best image in the sequence. Not everyone agrees with that strategy, but it is my time to 'waste'.
What I found is I like the fairly head on jump shots, or at least fairly close to head on. This is my first time doing this, so don't tell me I'm missing most of the jump, that is the back half of the horse. I'll figure that out on my own.
Most of the saved images are of horses and riders in the initial sequence of the jump. And a lot look alike. There is also somewhat of a challenge of positioning. Can't always be where I want to be. Again, my first time. Go easy.
This image is one of the very few shots where I am perpendicular to the jump. On reflection, I won't shy away from these, I like it.
The challenge of the this shot was the top of the jump was reflecting the sunlight. I shot with 0EV, and am lucky to get away with it. There is a little definition, so the surface is a little blown. Also the jump behind the subject it too light - and distracts from the subject. Other than that, the image takes care of itself. There are some nice greens, natural. And the dull oranges of fallen leaves.
One of the problems with shooting in manual mode is when you move from shadows to sunlight and don't make the corrections necessary, you can wind up with some interesting numbers. Like a speed of 1/3200 second. And ISO 1250. probably could have dialed in some more realistic numbers. Ha.
This is the camera JPG:
The surface of the jumps move the eye away from the horse and rider. The dark of the horse's neck also plays games with me, so I'l like to lighten that up just a bit.
And this is what I came up with.
With those two changes, my eyes stay on the horse and rider, doing the jump thing.
And the paint effect:
So far, the paint effect is pretty good on these.
In Saturday's trip to a farm for the Horse Eventing, I had a few conversations about shooting a RAW image as opposed to JPG. One of the points of the discussion was centered around time and knowledge to process the image file.
I'm going to go through a very basic process to process a RAW file into an image in Elements. This is Elements 14 and ACR 9.5. Sorry, but that is the last version I have. The current version should be similar.
By default, when a RAW file is opened in Elements, the Adobe Camera RAW plugin should open.
This image was shot with a -1 EV compensation because there will be areas of blown pixels. If there was no compensation, the dark horse saddle pad would be blown white where I know it was green. The histogram is left which indicates the image is dark overall and we'd like to correct it.
What follows is Kurt's quick edit.
First select AUTO. That selection will get is to what Adobe thinks are 'balanced' light levels.
When that is done, there are two real changes made. The histogram shows that light levels are moving to a more even level. And the saddle pad is beginning to show blown (Red) levels. The pad is now white instead of a shade of light green.
Leave it alone for now, there are other edits that are still to come.
Next step is to set Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation. RAW file are somewhat bland by nature. I have my starting points.
I set my Clairity and Vibrance values to 20 and Saturation to 10. When that happens, the saddle pad increases the blown area.
At this point my basic edits are done. Other edits if necessary can be done depending on what I what to do with the image.
But for this image, I would want to work on the saddle pad. And in this case the edit is simple, use the Whites slider.
I moved the Whites slider from 10 to 17 and the saddle pad color has returned.
From here, click on the Open Copy button and that will open the file in Elements. From there, accomplish your edits or save the image as .
For the most part after a few times through, this doesn't take that long. I usually don't like to spend more than a minute or two on basic edits. And it think it is worth it over that a camera will do.
This is the camera JPG.
I think my process is overall a better image. The saddle pad is still problematic, but with a little extra effort I cold get more green out of it. And since it is a RAW file, the information is there, just need to unlock it.
That's the quick process.
Today was a pretty good day for me. On top of it all, I get to add a new blog Label. Horse Eventing. So the horse eventing I went to today was not an actual event, but the practice for the event later this summer. (Way too many Events.) So there were groups of riders on the course who were either practicing for themselves or for the horse. It seems to me that there were riders of all ages and all types of horses. Everyone moved in groups, and those with the younger set had coaches. And some seemed to have their own posse.
But the day was great weather-wise. Lots of great sunshine.
So photography related, where to begin? I showed up on time, that was a good start. Turns out, our little photographer group, could go most anywhere on the course. Just stay away from the horses.
What I knew about horses before today was pretty much limited to John Wayne Westerns. And not that I know more now, but today I have the real visual. And the meadow muffins in the tread of my shoes are proof I was out on the farm. (C is delighted about that.)
I was out today with two members of my photo club who knew much more about horses and the events that was the subject of the shoot. Good time.
But where to start? 1/60? 1/200? 1/1000? 1/2000 jets? I took around 500 shots and most were at 1/800. I had only one shot where the focus was real off. I had a sequence where a tree branch photo bombed the AF, and that was too bad, it was a very good sequence. Other than that, all were in very good to great focus. (This is was a good confidence builder for the upcoming Air Show season.)
The folks out there were real nice, many asking if the photos would be available. And of course they will be. I handed out many of my cards.
I shot RAW and JPG, and many of the JPGs are OK to post. However, some shots in both formats needs some help because of shade from the helmet bills.
The first photo I wanted to work on and post had to have some of the problematic shade, and something unique. And here it is.
This is the camera generated JPG. Usual disclaimer, my JPGs are set to be bland. But the image is also a bit on the dark side. I'd set the exposure compensation to -1 because the sun reflection in this area was not playing nice on some of the rider's equipment and some of the jumps.
This image needs some advanced help with lighting to get the proper levels back. But it is worth the time.
That works for me. And the unique part of this image? The flying pony tail.
Like all photo shoots, I'm looking for 5 to 10 keeper shots by the end of the day. And since this was the first time out, I was really hoping to make the lower end. But I did get some very good 'action' shots - and some good stand around-ers.
What would this look like painted?
That's pretty awesome.
This is another image in the sequence from Monday's Eagle paparazzi adventure. At this point, the arriving Eagle is solidly overlooking the nest, and the departing Eagle is moments away from flight. I am one lucky person to have seen this. Certainly one of the top five nature events that I've witnessed in my life. (I need to get out more.) More story detail is in the Eagle Approach to Nest post.
Aside from the final image, this post will have to do more with the processing. From what I've read, the minimum lens on needs for 'birding' is 600 mm. Best I can do is 450 mm in DX or 600 mm in 1.3x.
What will 450 mm get you from where I was standing?
That's all folks. Maybe I just hang out with the wrong people. I want to crawl in the nest, or at least arm's reach away.
Couple of things about this image. This is Nikon's JPG of the shot. To be fair, I have no image enhancements for the JPGs. I usually don't play much with the camera JPGs, only using them for playback. To get the best natural light levels in playback, the image should be Standard. But you get the idea. And this is why I shoot RAW. Some will argue that RAW takes too much time. I would argue with practice images don't take too much time and in some special cases, like this, the time is insignificant.
For me this is a great subject, two Eagles and a nest. And I didn't mess up the focus. Shutter speed, ISO and aperture settings were good. I need to see the yellow in the Eagle's eyes.
How to get there.
First, the settings:
To get to the yellow in the eyes, I'd need a very aggressive crop. The crop would not look good on one of the monitors, which is the final test. The image would be somewhat pixelated.
Last night, worked on enlarging the total file through PhotoShop. I wasn't real pleased with the end results. There was some Youtubing involved. The theory is to enlarge the image and then do the crop. In theory I should be able to really zoom in on the area that I'm targeting. PS didn't let me down, it does a lot of things very well, but other applications do some things much better.
And that's what happened here. I used On One's resize to enlarge the image to 400%. And then I did my crop. This one shows up on the monitor real well. And yellow eyes.
That took care of the sizing issues. I used ACR's Auto Levels for the most part for lighting. I did some spot touch ups for exposure on the white hood and tail of both Eagles.
I joke with many of my photo club members that I don't want to spend more than three minutes one any RAW image. I may have to re-think that philosophy. I have a little more time than that invested here. And I have to re-look at the Eagle Approach image. Bet I can drill in a bit more.
Today's biggest decision for after work was to go for exercise walk or go Eagle watching. Too nice a day to worry about health.
Turns out it was a good decision to ditch the walk. I went out to my favorite Eagle paparazzi spot thinking that the excellent temperature and clear skies would have the Eagles moving around. Not that I know a lot about Eagle habits, but the warm weather had me out and about.
Once I arrived at the park, I could tell this was the right thing to do. It was as (critter) noisy as I'd heard it so far this year. Bug, geese and other birds were all in symphony.
Compared to other visits, I was there just over an hour when I saw the unmistakable shape of an Eagle on approach against a cloudless blue sky. It flew toward me, did a circle over my viewing area and a circle approach to the nest.
Two technical points about today, I wanted to do a lot of shots with the 1.3x frame size. This would effectively extend my max viewing angle to that of a 600 mm lens. I really need to know how much I can crop the image if necessary before it becomes unusable. And I wanted to slay the other monster that attacks my wildlife images, the photo bombing trees that steal the auto focus.
I took just over 140 Eagle shots this afternoon. I had only three shots that the focus was really, really bad. I had another three where the trees stole the focus. With the rest, the auto focus held on the moving subject through the branches. Just like the Engineers drew it up. For me, excellent results.
What I witnessed this afternoon was shift change at the nest. Wow. I was hoping the approaching Eagle would have some form of food for its mate. Alas, there was nothing but empty talon. When I saw the other mate leaving the nest, I figured out what was going on.
I still don't know if there are Eaglets in the nest. In the past I've seen food flown in. This was different. This was two parents hunting. The population in the nest may be more than two.
So, it was a great day to Eagle watch. For the most part, I didn't screw anything up. I have some great images with both DX and 1.3x frame sizes. Even with a pretty good crop, this turned out well.
I was shooting at 3 FPS. Part of me says I should have gone at a higher rate, but instead of throwing away over 100 shots, there would be more. There is a sequence where I would have really like to had a higher rate, but we'll see what I can pull out of that one. Today, definitely one of the better efforts. And a lot of luck.
This researching of train is fascinating. And I'm now beginning to believe it was the train aficionados that created the internet as a device to store and share their information. The amount of information that is available is somewhat overwhelming. And so it is with the Penn Central 8620. And in the small world happenings of life, it turns out that the PC 8620 and I have a connection.
The original PC 8620, a SW8, was built in February of 1953 by General Motors Diesel. (Being built in February of the 1950s is close to a connection, but that isn't it.) The unit was one of just over a total 370 built. The 8620 one of was originally built for the New York Central Rail Road. In 1968, the NYCRR merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad to form the short lived Penn Central. The Penn Central went bankrupt in 1970 and later merged with Conrail.
The SW8 was a diesel electric built for standard gauge with a 8 cylinder two stroke supercharged diesel engine rated at 800 hp that generated 600 kW of power. The model was built between 1950 and 1954. Some of the units were built for the US ARMY and found their way to South Korea. One unit was owned by the US AIR FORCE for the Titan Missile Program.
Anyway, going bankrupt in 70's is not our connection either.
What does connect us is that I found a number of pictures of the PC 8620, now the Conrail 8620, in downtown Pittsburgh in December of 1977. I'm sure that sometime in December of 1977, I was dahn-tahn as well. Small world.
This model has fared much better than the shots I found on line.
Yesterday I felt like the Eagle paparazzi. I staked out my new favorite nest for over two hours waiting for some good Eagle action. What a life!
I thought the only good action would be a fly-in. How wrong could one be?
First, I found a great spotting location. Didn't have to bang through a lot of underbrush. Had a nice level spot with clear vision to the nest. I'm guessing the distance was about 70 yards. (Could be a new toy alert, range finder?) Big enough for a chair.
I never saw a fly-in, but at some point I saw some movement int he nest. Picked up the camera and fired away. Haven't any clue if to the Eaglets have hatched yet, but guessing that is a few weeks away. Thinking this was the female moving around.
This is pretty much the limit of my equipment. This was effectively 450 mm shot. And it is aggressively cropped. But it looks good on the monitors.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I'd like to find a way to lump Great Lakes Freighters in there as well. All are large. All are very powerful. All are mechanical. I often wonder if the information outlets that exist today existed in my 'learning' years where my life might have taken me. I'm fortunate to have had an exposure to automobiles and planes early in life. I have thoroughly enjoyed my experiences in the large aircraft world. Could I have done the same on the water or the rails?
Enough musing on a Sunday afternoon. But it does lead me to do more research on some of the photography subjects. I tried to find information on the Union Pacific Engine 489, but was not successful. I was able to find out more about the BNSF 5681. And yes, there is one in existence working the lines as of March 2018.
The working BNSF 5681 is a GE AC44CW, built in March of 2004. The AC44CW model was built between 1993 and 2004. There were over 2800 engines produced, with 121 going to BNSF.
The 4,400 HP engine was built for standard gauge track. It weighs in over 425,000 pounds carrying 5,000 gallons of fuel. It is 73 feet long and 15.5 feet high.
And this one has orange and yellow paint. Can't be all bad.
At ISO 2000, there was some noise that had to be removed. Now that I'm getting the hang of it, just have to remember to do this.
With the lights on, I had to go with a -1.0 EV.
At the DMRRC, this was just sitting without much going on around it.
One of my favorite locations for a back drop at the DMRRC is a bit hard to get to. Setup for these shots is from an access point in the middle of the set. That's the easy part. Getting to the access point is not the easy point. There are low points to crawl around. Once you can get there, the effort is worth it.
I was lucky enough to get an interesting set of engines in front of the station house. I wasn't stacking at this point, going with single shot. To get a clear shot, I was going with 1/80 second on a 35 mm lens. I could have gone slower, maybe down to 1/50 second, but I needed to be sure. I wanted to get some DOF, with speed considerations I went with f/6.3. That put the ISO up around 5k.
Getting a focus point is critical. With critters and humans, go for the eyes. For me, with the trains, it is the train number placard above the cab windows. if I can get the focus on that, the rest will take care of itself. It's even tougher if the placard is backlit, which is not the case here. Usually with the model trains, if the numbers are lit, the train has a chance of moving. Usually. Anyway, getting the placard sharp is critical.
Here's the focus point:
I did get it where it needed to be. Good start.
The original image needs a lot of help. As I mentioned before, I was taking this from an access point and hand holding the camera. It's not exactly level. I was just happy there wasn't any evidence of camera shake.
The weathering on these units is really good. Engines look used. Realism.
This looks good on the monitor as a screen saver.
No day is bad when the skies are clear and the temps are approaching 60 at the end of March. It's a Friday and the work week is over. I'm going Eagle chasing, close to home.
I've been living here over 20 years, and I'm just getting out.
I staked out the nest for close to two hours this afternoon. I could see some movement in the nest. I have this shot from earlier in the week, when the food was delivered via air.
Photographically speaking, there isn't much going on here. But, just to be here to see this is awesome. I had seen the fly in Eagle come in, no images and probably just as well. Just to see it come in.
And today's effort was to see the fly in Eagle deliver the food. This was as close as I could get.
Damn tree held the auto focus...... I can laugh about it now. But again, I watched the drama unfold with both eyes and it is something I won't forget for some time.
In the end, I was in the woods for about 2.5 hours. Time well spent.
Probably the best image of the afternoon was a Canadian Goose. There were a few of them 'sunning' themselves on a body of water. I was surprised I could get close to them, but I did and watched for a while.
So far this year, I've been shooting Manual with Auto ISO on. I like it.
So here is my Canadian Goose shot for the day.
I like the sun angle, just before sunset. usually doesn't work that way for me. I'll take it.
This year at the DMRRC model train shoot, there were two trains that I had not seen previously. One was a US ARMY painted locomotive with cargo cars loaded with Army tanks.
The other engine was 'weathered'. Weathering model trains is the same as weathering other models, that is the process to make a model a bit more realistic. A lot of the trains at the DMRRC have various degrees of weathering. For some reason, the job on the PC 6816 really got to me. Maybe, because if I were to draw a working train, this would be it.
I had taken this image after I put away all the stacking stuff, meaning this is a single shot. There's a bit o' bokeh in the background but I can live with it.
The other item of note, I was using manual mode with auto ISO. In my case, it is live and learn.
The settings:
Look at that ISO - 11,400. Yikes.
What does an image at ISO 11 - whatever look like at 100%?
Since I very rarely shoot anything over ISO 2000, my experience with removing noise is somewhat limited. Always a chance to learn.
All of my noise decreasing programs/filters didn't help much with this image. Most just sharpened the noise, which I think is funny. I ended up using ACR's noise reduction sliders. Again, a learning thing.
When I finished that process, I hit it with AI Clear. Not so much for the noise reduction, but to add just a bit of sharpening back.
And that gave me this:
The noise irritation is gone, and some definition still remains. I like this a lot. That is a lot of noise removal. So the final image is this.
This was a learning adventure. And it works for me.
Spring is on the way. Nothing confirms that fact like a very un-Michigan like cloudless day and seasonal low 40s temp. Just beautiful. I didn't need much coaxing from a club friend when asked if I wanted to chase some Eagles.
I've been living in mid-Michigan for close to 25 years. And I'm now finding out that our county park system has areas of 'wilderness' where the wild critters live. And along with the critters are the Eagles. Less than 10 miles from the house, with some luck, I'll get to see something more exciting than a sea gull.
Today would also be a great day to experiment with different auto focus modes. I had visions of using all the modes that follow a target in flight, because I'd be watching Eagles in flight. Right?
The good news is I did use more than one AF mode. But what really happened was the AF caught all the branches around me. I really didn't have a clearing to work from. Again, I learned a lot. Sometimes less technology works better. Single point would have worked much better.
And as to photographing birds in flight, well I have a long way to go.
Although I had only a few good shots, being outdoors and seeing these birds in flight, it was a no lose deal.
This image will not win any prizes, but this is a personal success story. I can't judge distance, other than to say very far away. And it is a very aggressive crop. But this goes up as a spring is here tribute.
The settings:
(Note to self, change clock time. It was really 5:30 ish.)
I was using Manual Mode with Auto ISO. Just happened to work out to ISO 100. The focal length says 300, but combined with the D500, it is effectively 450 mm.
As is recorded, the AF was dynamic. And this is the target the camera hit.
Close. Again, it was really far away.
When I'm working to convince myself I either need/don't need a bigger lens, I think for airshows I have enough with 450 mm. But If I'm going take the bird/nature thing seriously 450 mm just isn't enough.
There's a lot of blue there. Won't be printing many of these, the ink balance would not be maintained.
But it is a magnificent creature on a great looking day.
This is the first of the photo stacks from the DMRRC 2019 shoot. I like the Santa Fe 330 engine. Actually, I like all the colors on the engines, and one that I'll look at later that looks very weathered. But for now the reds, yellows and silver of the Santa Fe are on display.
This is an eleven shot stack. Somewhere around shot five, the train was moved. Fortunately, the train was moved in a backward direction. And fortunately I have good images of the train before it was moved.
Fortunately.
In all the previous stacking projects I've done, I've pretty much let the software do its thing and that was good enough. Here was a challenge.
The basic settings:
When I did the original eleven shot stack, this was the best I (the software) could do with respect to the train.
If the ultimate goal is a sharp image, that ain't it.
So I decided to blend a five shot stack to get the sharp train and blended it in the final eleven shot stack.
Tough to tell, but the images are different.
After I had the two together, and a little cleanup. This is my finished effort.
There is a lot going on here, and I like it. The blue background is what the walls in the club look like now. To go much further with this, I'd have to think of something. And with any luck, the club will have something on the wall next year.
And the painted version.
Both will make wonderful screen backgrounds.
Yesterday was the Club's annual photo shoot at the Detroit Model Railroad Club's location. I think this is the fourth year we've done this.
First, four of my images from 2018 were chosen for the 2019 calendar. Very happy to see the work is appreciated by others.
That was the good part of the day, the rest seemingly went downhill from there. But as the noted philosopher Yoda noted years in the future, "The greatest teacher failure is". And so as it goes with most of my life's education, by the end of the day, I learned a lot.
First, my coordination with other people needs work. People skills. Also doing some camera work were some members of the DMRRC. I should have explained what I was doing with stacking and the process. While I was stacking, some trains were moved, some flash shots went, and well, challenges come in many forms. I will have to overcome. To be very clear, this was my issue, no one else's.
And then there was my choice of camera.
All week prior to the shoot, I told myself to use the D7200. The connection to the tablet via Bluetooth works, the images are very good. A proven performer for this event. And then I said, well let's try the D500. And as the noted philosopher Homer (Simpson) philosophed, "Doh!".
Well, I guess I had to try.
I had put a quick release on the shoulder straps of the D7200. Must have been a reason for that? Ha, well that was an unexpected source of frustration. That shoulder strap was a pain.
Then there was the tethering from the camera to the tablet. The D7200 has a great simple WiFi set up. The D500 was set up to use Snapbridge. If I have one issue with the D500, it is the network is way too proprietary. Snapbridge and I are not friends. That is another post in itself, but I made the conscious decision to bypass WiFi for a cable. I chuckle at my foolish thoughts.
For some reason, and I will find out, but my stacking didn't read the NEF files from the D500. This is not an issue with the D7200. That mistake could have been a real disaster, except I was also creating JPG files. And in large format. Luck comes in many flavors. And for the failure/teacher part, I have to work with JPGs. I worked on a stack this morning, and Yoda would be proud. I overcame the file format issue, JPGs work just fine. I also overcame the train moving and it turned out OK. That post will follow with the story.
All in all, through my failures I have learned a lot. I didn't leave with as many stacks as I usually walk away with so I'll have to work with single shot images.
On a more positive note, I did get some shots with ISOs over 10k. Will be interesting to see how they turned out.
More learning.
After looking at the Heron in the Green image for a while, I thought a paint take might look good. I laughed a bit, as most of the green was gone. But this would look good in a smaller print - and would certainly would beg the question if it was real - or painted.
What happened to all the green?
Reviewing some of the images from Reno, getting ready for the summer season. I saw this one of the Jack Links bi-plane. For more of the Jack Links story and my attachment to some of the parts used in this unique aircraft, read here.
This image is severely cropped, maybe to less than 20%. It won't win any prizes, but looks good on the monitor.
But what really gets me is the prop blur. And the sky background. This was at the far end of my reach, 450 mm. And really cropped. Like all images, if it stars as crap, nothing you can do will help. But, if your image is in focus you can get away with a lot. And I think I did.
The settings:
I need to remember f/8 and 1/500 sec for future shots. The prop is just about perfect for me with this one. I can live with f/8. For planning purposes, I can go to f/11. But this far out, F/8 is pretty sharp.
It looks good on the monitor. And for now, good enough.
As the temperatures crawled into the mid-50s today, I started thinking of visiting my feathered friends in a few weeks. It's been a few weeks since I've opened up some of these programs, tough to get in the picture mood when the wind chill is at 0 and the days are so short.
I've not been totally forgetting about photography over the last few weeks. I've done some work with a variable neutral density filter at a near by man made waterfall before it froze over. If I elect to use a ND filter for my airshow work, at this time it won't be a VND. I found a lot of color shift. It could be fixed, but why add to the post processing.
Last weekend the sun was out on a Saturday, that I didn't have to do the real job, so I hit the road. I hit a few lighthouses. My plan was to take a number of JPG images and see how they compared to my processing of a RAW image. Long story short, Nikon's JPG just doesn't do it for me. My processing for anything I'd want to show still includes ACR so I'm not really saving that much time. The RAW file size hasn't been an issue in the D7200 so far. So unless I get trapped into some 'vacation' photos, I'll be shooting RAW.
So back to the Heron. I like this image because it is busy. Busy to me anyway. Some of the image is artfully out of focus. And the bird is in focus. You can really see the yellow eye.
Settings:
I'm still a few weeks away from going to the Refuge, but the season is on the way.
