The Heron – my first bird picture.

[wzslider height=”800″ info=”true” lightbox=”true”]NOTE:  The above two photo’s represent the original un-cropped photo with no post processing and the second photo is cropped with post processing.  The added digital “noise”, seen mostly in the water, is due to the crop.

I took my first bird picture today, strictly by accident.  I was at Lyman’s Orchards in Middlefield, CT with Cheryl and we took a walk over to the duck pond.  I had no desire to take any photo’s of the hundreds of ducks that were there (everyone feeds them from the rear porch).

However, there was a beautiful, (possibly Blue Heron), perched on a rock in the pond.  It was the only bird of it’s kind in the area.  He had spread his full and beautiful wings, (probably about 2.5′ in width), and he would hold that position.  My camera equipment was back in the truck.  So I scooted back, set up the camera and waited for him to do that again. His back was to us.  I waited, and waited, oh did I tell you that I continued to wait.  Well he never did it again. (aaarghhhh).

So Cheryl said just photograph the bird, he’s beautiful.  I took a picture from the rear and off to the side.  The photo shown above represented him the best.  Now here’s the kicker.  I didn’t have a long lens with me.  The longest lens I had was a 50mm.  I was about 25 yards away so he ended up being this small unidentifiable bird in the center of a large landscape photo.  NOT good.

Thanks to the power of the Sony’s Nex 7 with it’s 24 mb sensor I was able to crop in considerably to render this photo.  It’s grainy but it’s useable, at least online.

I had been thinking for quite some time about taking bird photo’s.  It may require another camera body, (with faster auto focus capability), and a long lens but this photo made me realize how much fun it could be.  I would image capturing a beautiful bird in flight would be the best.  Some day.