Snowy Egrets Fighting
I am sitting on the window bench in the corner of the kitchen. I scroll through the 1400 remaining pictures from my week of photographing birds in Florida. I took over 15,000 photos, but have already deleted over 90% of my photos. Ultimately, I know I will delete about another 1000 photos, reducing my count to perhaps 400. Culling is essential. Even then, I will not be done as I will further choose no more than about 100 favorites to share, less than 1 out of every 100 that I took. That is few enough that friends and family can scroll through an album in a couple of minutes, perhaps longer if they choose to linger on one or more particularly captivating images.
I am currently looking at a set of about 60 photos of snowy egrets, already culled from over 600. I select an image of two egrets fighting in mid air. I remember the moment.
The early morning sun rises above the Atlantic Ocean on my left, casting a bright, soft light with a slightly warm glow. The two snowy egrets had been going after each other off and on for the past half an hour or more. I am standing in the shallow water of the inlet perhaps 30 feet from them. One chases the other, the white feathers on its head up in all directions. The bad bed head indicates its irritation. Suddenly, they are in the air, fighting right in front of me: up, down, left, right, frenetic. I raise my camera and start photographing, trying desperately to get them in the frame of my long telephoto lens, hoping that the camera will hit the focus. It lasts just a handful of seconds, then it is over as one egret flies away. I think to myself, perhaps I will get at few good images from the 100+ photos I have just taken. Most will undoubtedly be either out of focus, birds half out of the frame, or just uninteresting. But perhaps there is one that I will love.
I begin to edit the photo in front of me. It needs very little. The birds almost fill the frame, but the lower bird’s eye, the focal point of the shot, is a bit too far to the left. I slightly crop in the right edge shifting the eye a bit more towards the center. I lift the whites on both birds, bringing them to their true brightness. The bird on the left, beautifully lit by the sun, upside down, wings outstretched, head in profile as it tries to avoid the beak of the attacking bird on top, does not need any additional editing. The attacking bird’s wings are spread wide but in the shade. As a result, they have a blue cast that I clean up. I also increase the exposure on the wings so that while the shade is still noticeable, it is not harsh. Finally, I slightly darken the blue gray sky to better emphasize the birds.
Success. I am very happy with this shot.