High Key Cattle Egret

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High Key Egret
Image © 2012/Denise Ippolito Photography
High Key Cattle Egret, Venice Rookery Florida
Canon 500mm lens +1.4 ex, 1/400 sec. at f/8, ISO 400

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I captured the above image at the Venice Rookery while co-leading for Art Morris on his Southwest Florida IPT (Instructional Photo Tour). I decided to create a high key, backlit image of this egret after creating several silhouettes of a cormorant just a few feet away. There were lots of birds at the Venice Rookery and lots of great photo opps. Artie has a great group of folks on the workshop and I enjoyed getting to meet them all. I head off to Sarasota in a few minutes to give my slide show/ lecture “Bloomin’ Ideas” along with a Photoshop Extraction program to the Garden Club of America at Selby Gardens.
For the image above I used Nik Color Efex Pro 4 (use the code BAA to save 15%) Tonal Contrast to bring in a little more detail to the washed out original capture. I was careful not to overdo the contrast as I wanted to retain the high key look. I also had to do some pruning. I photographed this bird in many different poses and I also took a few shots of the bird vertically and also with another egret sitting on a lower perch, so you will probably be seeing more of this series :) .


______________________________________________________________ denise ippolito


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7 Responses

  1. Don Schroder says:
    February 9, 2012 at 2:15 pm

    Very nice, Denise. The branch adds triangle and diagonal composition to the image.


    Thank you Don, I loved the branch more than the bird! :)
    denise

  2. Dennis Bishop says:
    February 9, 2012 at 3:53 pm

    To echo what Don already said, the branch is what really does it for this image. I’m looking forward to more.


    Thanks Dennis, I agree too :)
    denise

  3. Cynthia M. Thayer says:
    February 9, 2012 at 6:04 pm

    Now you know I’m going to absolutely love this one, and I do :) You knocked this one out of the ballpark.


    Thank you Cynthia, It means a lot! :)
    denise

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