High Key Reddish Egret Portrait

Went back to Bolivar Flats yesterday to scout out the conditions for a Sunday shoot with a couple of clients.  Thought that it was going to be a major bust when I first arrived.  The tide was up near sunrise and there were no expose sandbars.  Had to work the shoreline which isn’t my preference.  Very few birds to be seen at first but it was still a little dark out about 45 min before sunrise.

Found a group of Skimmers and ended up belly crawling to get close to them, until a couple of wade fisherman walked right in front of me scaring all of the birds away while pulling a wagon behind them with their gear.  Didn’t have time to get too angry as I’ve learned to take advantage of that situation by getting up and quickly moving forward and getting into position.  As anticipated, the birds came back to that same spot and I spend then next 1.5 hrs shooting from that location.

Ended up being much better photo op’s than expected.  Especially when the Reddish Egrets showed up.  While taking photos of other birds, this Reddish landed right in front of me as he was chasing a White Morph Reddish Egret away.  He ran in front of me and luckily stopped to bask in the glory of his conquest with his feathers all puffed out.  He had his feathers puffed out in this position for about 1 second, so I was glad to get this shot.

Glad that I went yesterday as today was a wash out with the rain along the coast.

Taken with a Canon 1DX and Canon 500mm F4 IS II lens with 1.4X III teleconverter mounted on Skimmer ground pod with Wimberley II gimbal head.

Aperture priority, 1/1000 sec @ F8, ISO 400, evaluative metering, +2/3 exposure compensation