Great Egret Fishing Series – Sheldon Marsh

The light was gray and flat at Sheldon Marsh in Northwest Ohio.  I was hoping to photograph warblers during the spring migration.  The mile long walk from the parking lot to Lake Erie resulted in no good photo ops.

Once I reached the beach at Lake Erie, I was greeted by a very cooperative Great Egret.  He let me photograph him for about 10 minutes while he fished.  He caught several minnows and then caught the larger fish shown in this photo series.  He didn’t seem to mind my presence at all.  He just kept on fishing.

While I would have liked to have better light, the gray light worked out OK for this sequence.  I didn’t have to worry about the white in the Egret blowing out in the sunlight.  Also the gray background of the lake helps to really make the Egret stand out in the photos.

Processing the photographs was fairly straight forward.  Noise reduction of the background and selectively sharpening the Egret and the fish.  It was important to brighten the Egret and darken the background for the Egret to stand out in the photo.  I used Google’s Viveza 2 to selectively brighten and darken the imaages.

Written by Martin Belan

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