Wet day, worth going out?
October 24, 2015Oh yes. I love taking the camera out in the rain because something unexpected often turns up.
Wildlife, like us, tend to hunker down a bit in the rain but there is always something going on. This heron was wrapped up and doing pretty much nothing but trying to keep dry. It was raining lightly but steadily at the time. But its perch on a large dead branch in front of of the yellowing autumn leaves of an oak made for a striking composition.
Herons have dazzlingly white plumes and I usually find, when shooting aperture priority, that I need some exposure compensation to prevent blowing the whites on them. This image is shot with -0.7 stops compensation. That’s my normal starting point and it’s worked fine here. I was shooting handheld but braced hard against a large oak tree that also provided some protection from the rain. ISO1600 gave me 1/320 sec. Vibration reduction really does help in situations like this; a 500mm lens is pretty tough to use hand held but almost all the images were sharp.