Today’s Fun Friday post is two more photos taken at an alligator pool in Myakka River State Park, Florida. Among the seemingly endless number of alligators at this small water pool, birds were busy foraging among the gators as if they weren’t even there!
Although today’s images seem to show a Great Egret stepping on/very close to a gator, there is actually more distance from the two than what appears (although closer than I would get!). This is one of the interesting phenomenons created by using a telephoto lens … the “compression effect”. When using telephoto lenses, everything appears closer than they usually are. In the process of making things closer, things in the frame are often compressed so they look closer together … as the egret and the gators in this image. This great effect is also fun to play with when shooting mountainscapes, where mountains seem to be “stacked” close together.
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 7D body
- Canon EF 100-400mm, f/4.5-f/5.6 IS lens, shot at 400mm
- Handheld, with IS “On”
- ISO 400
- Aperture 5.6
- Shutter 1/500 sec.