A while back a few of us had a blog friend named Office Diva. She dropped out of sight for personal reasons. But whenever I see a Green Heron (Butorides virescens) or make a photograph of one I am reminded that she gave me that nickname. It was kind of funny since I rarely photograph birds and figured there must be a better moniker for me but there you go…even I think of myself by her tag. For some reason, well being old is one, my first impulse is to remember this guy…never mind the recent movie remake.
So it is with Diva in mind that I post this shot from Sunday’s stroll at the Amherst Rail Trail along Poor Farm Swamp.
Shot with my old Canon 300+1.4 teleconverter. About 60% of the image was cropped away to attain this size for the bird. It’s OK for web-sharing but wouldn’t be suitable for framing. I guess it’s too bad I didn’t get the Sigma 150-600 but I am very happy with the Canon 16-35 which is getting much more use than a long lens would in my image making.
Stephen Gingold Nature Photography Blog 
I like the Green Heron pic very much. Is it too grainy or not tack sharp? I can’t tell since I need cataract surgery therefore my vision is a bit hazy. I think of OD a lot and I should try contracting her.
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At this size, not really, Yvonne. But if it were to be published or printed at full page size or larger the artifacts from uprezing would be evident.
We exchanged emails a few times but then no more.
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“Uprezing”? That’s a new one for me. And I tend to think of artifacts as arrowheads and such. Ah, the complications of learning a new field! I think uprezing must be going from, say, 72 dpi for the web to 300 dpi for printing.
In any event, I like your bird-on-a-stick. This past weekend, I got a so-so photo of a blue heron perched high on the limb of a dead tree. He had both feet on the limb, though. They will perch on one leg, but generally limit that to times they’re on the ground.
Funny that you knew Office Diva, too. We’d enjoyed many of the same spots in Texas. I can’t believe it’s been three years since we last were in touch.
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72 to 300 would be a huge uprez. I was speaking more of the file size being uprezzed to create a larger image after having cropped away so much around the sides. Initially all my files come in at 360 ppi. After cropping they are still 360 but there is less information making up the image. When uprezzing something like this, Photoshop, in this case, uses algorithms to calculate where new pixels need to be created and what color and light values they should have. Photoshop does a decent job of it and there are specialized plugins to do that on a possibly better framework, but not having to do that is the best option. My native image size coming out of Camera Raw is 12″x18″ approximately. So if I want a larger print I need to uprezz the file.
I’ve tried to balance on one leg when drying my feet after a shower but inevitably it’s a fail.
OD and I exchanged emails for about a year after she left blogging but then lost touch.
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By coincidence, for the picture “with a lot of green” on my blog today I used the Canon 16–35mm (and zoomed almost all the way out to 18mm).
I wonder what was up with the bird’s one-legged stance.
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No one knows for sure, but the most common theory is to retain warmth on a cool morning. I’ve tried it and I just fall over.
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I can see why you’d fall over: with uncertain evidence you wouldn’t want to take a stand.
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Well now I’ll have to see you as a green heron, standing (and falling over) on one leg 🙂
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I wouldn’t last long as a wader, Melissa. 🙂
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Earlier this summer I went out with a biologist to get photos of bog rosemary. It doesn’t grow in a bog, it grows in a fen, something we don’t see much of here. To get to this fen you have to wade through a doughnut of wetland. I was way past my knees, clinging to cattails, frequently falling over. The biologist who took me out there is quite tall. He had to keep fishing me out of the muck. I wouldn’t want to go in there again but I’m glad I went the once. Good thing I had my phone (aka camera) in a ziplock bag!
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Sounds like a great adventure but I agree…once was probably enough. 🙂
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He’d mentioned that I should come later, when he took a mutual friend of ours out there. She is well into her 70’s but still out in the field, studying carexes. I was so relieved when they went without me 🙂 She probably did much better than I did.
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