Egrets

[Barbie Heid]

Some snowy and Great egrets from Hammonasset Beach State Park.

 

[TomV]

Hi Barbie, I like the compositions and the subjects. As a birder myself, I will suggest that you need to reduce your exposure when your subject is light so as to get more feather details. You may be exposing for the entire frame but in this case you should be exposing for the subject. If necessary, you can boost the darker stuff in post while keeping the lights from being saturated.
I do not know your setup, but if you use a histogram while setting up the shot then you can reduce the chance of saturating the lights and presenting the birds with more life-like detail. You could also, for experimentation purposes, bracket the exposures (+/- 2 eV) and see how the lower exposure could improve the subject details. You will not miss the shot but get to see the effects.

I see your other photos are well-exposed. The oyster catcher and other shore birds are very nice. Egrets are very hard to get right, thus my suggestions.

 

[Barbie Heid]

Hi Barbie, I like the compositions and the subjects. As a birder myself, I will suggest that you need to reduce your exposure when your subject is light so as to get more feather details. You may be exposing for the entire frame but in this case you should be exposing for the subject. If necessary, you can boost the darker stuff in post while keeping the lights from being saturated.
I do not know your setup, but if you use a histogram while setting up the shot then you can reduce the chance of saturating the lights and presenting the birds with more life-like detail. You could also, for experimentation purposes, bracket the exposures (+/- 2 eV) and see how the lower exposure could improve the subject details. You will not miss the shot but get to see the effects.

I see your other photos are well-exposed. The oyster catcher and other shore birds are very nice. Egrets are very hard to get right, thus my suggestions.

Thank you! That day (egrets) was sort of an experiment - we were curious to see who would be out in less-than-ideal weather (light rain), so the lighting was very tricky. I normally shoot auto-WB but decided to try the 'cloudy' setting. It worked for some shots but not others. I'll use those suggestions - thanks again!