One evening during my recent Myakka River State Park stay was a very memorable one … complete with a wonderful sunset. The wonderful reds and violets of the sunset reflected off the clouds and sky, into the Myakka River. Fortunately, there were several birds still feeding in the river, making for some wonderful photography.
In particular, a Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticoraz) had just come out and was feeding along the shoreline:
and a Great Egret (Ardea alba) was busy trolling through the river, looking for a last-minute snack, before retiring to his rookery for the night:
Making low light images of feeding birds can be difficult, especially when hand-holding (as with these photos), but the effort is definitely worth it. Using good hand-holding techniques is critical, as is a slightly higher ISO setting and Image Stabilization (IS). I also tried to time the images so that the image was made when the bird was not moving around. Even so, had lots of blurry images … so shoot, shoot, shoot when in low light conditions!
Photo Equipment Used:
- Canon 7D body
- Canon EF100mm-400mm, f/4.5-f/5.6 IS lens, at 400mm
- Handheld
- ISO 800
- Aperture f/5 – f/5.6
- Shutter 1/13 sec. to 1/25 sec. (with IS turned on)