After a long absence photo-wise, I was tempted by the autumn colours to snap a few pictures.

This full-frame heron flew past me this morning as if to say, "welcome back Mike", permitting me with a nice grab-shot.

Harsh lighting conditions made life a bit difficult - the heron was not in complete sunlight, whilst the background was, therefore I had to adjust the heron to reduce shadows. On top of that, there was a lifting fog which sort of hazed out the background, therefore I upped the saturation overall. Due to the shadow-light contrast between heron and background, a narrow halo was created surrounding part of the bird. This I eliminated by using a 3-point blur brush while zoomed in at about 200%.

Canon 5D Mark III with my 500L f4 lens handheld @ 1/500, f9.5, ISO 800, +1 exposure compensation - no crop.


Cheers,

Mike