Behind the shutter
Last May, I went back to the Palo Alto Baylands to check what the egrets and the other local birds were up to. There was a lot of activity. I ended-up there at around 11:00AM (I usually go early in the morning), the sky had some haze and light clouds reducing the hardness of the direct sunlight. Here are a few shots from the Snowy Egrets I took that day:
I usually intend to take images of the birds in action, doing something. I found it makes the nature photos more interesting when you can tell a story (such nesting, fighting, taking off, landing, and so on).
So, for that reason I always thought of capturing the birds in their natural environment, making sure that the hand of man is invisible. While sorting my images after returning from the photo shot, I found one that captured my attention. The image didn’t have for that matter the hand of man, but the head of a man and a woman. Here is the non-edited image from the camera:
Nikon D50 • Nikkor 80-200mm
86mm • 1/2000s (ev -1.33) • f/10.0
5.2.2007 11:48AM
I found the contrast between the fore-front presence of the Egret seen from the side and the head of the people popping up from the bottom of the composition quite interesting. In this instance, I liked the idea of intentionally including the human component in a photo initially intended for a nature category.
I like the movement of the composition, creating lines and frames around the people faces and the three distinct plans: foreground, background and in between. I also liked that the guy holds a cigarette in his mouth, it gives the scene a stronger impact.
I made a few editing choices to the original:
– removed the palm tree branches, although I went back and forth on that one
– cropped the top left area which doesn’t bring anything, and to fit the 11×14 aspect ratio
– applied some minor curve corrections here and there to reduce some of the contrast and to popup some details
I submitted the edited image (as seen at the top of this blog entry) to the PACC competition on 7.3.07. We had the great pleasure to have Mark Hatasaka to judge the photos that night. Mark is a well known nature and landscape photographer who also teaches and published some great reference photography books. You can found his books here.
Mark liked the “quirky humor” aspect of the image, the guy with the cigarette “who is a classic”, as well as the technical quality of the execution. Mark granted the image the second place in the category and suggested the idea to remove the head of the woman on the left to make an even better image. After removing the head, I found the image unbalanced, so I also moved the guy to the left. Although the head of the guy is not anymore framed by the Egret, I think the the image is more interesting like this. Thanks Mark!
And feedback welcome!