Cocoi heron, Yacuma River, Bolivia
Fujifilm X-T3, Fujinon 100-400mm R LM OIS WR lens, f5.6 @ 1/2000 second, ISO 1600
Although it’s the middle of the day, I often find myself shooting at high ISO settings for wildlife and especially with birds. There’s nothing more disappointing than capturing a great pose or gesture in an active subject, only to discover that the raw file isn’t as sharp as you want it to be. These days, our cameras are usually pretty good at finding the correct focus, so the main culprit is an inappropriate shutter speed – a shutter speed that’s too slow for the subject in action. I’ll often set my camera to shutter priority with a 1/2000 second and auto ISO, just to be sure.
For this photo, we were sitting on a long, motorised canoe on the Yacuma River. I use the term ‘motorised’ loosely because on our homeward leg, the motor cut out and our fearless captain paddled the last two hours home, very aware of the alligators and cayman eyeing us off hungrily as they swam around the canoe in diminishing circles. Okay, so the diminishing circles is a bit of a stretch!
In the dry season, the Amazonian floodplains contract and you’re left with just a few, deep tributaries cutting their way through the rich brown earth to the main river. Often we were four or five metres below the river banks as we glided along the soil-rich (muddy) waters, but when in shadow, these banks made great backgrounds for what could otherwise be considered harsh light. Rather than finding your subject in front of a busy or bright background that is distracting, the relatively dark and colourless bank was ideal.
Then it was just a matter of being ready. Fortunately, as the water recedes, the wildlife congregates along the river. You couldn’t move more than 10 metres without seeing an alligator or cayman, which meant the birds had to be especially careful when they dropped by the water for a feed or a drink.
I had seen this heron quite a way off and as our canoe came closer, something spooked it and it took to flight. Using my fastest frame rate, I just kept the shutter depressed and fired off 10 or 20 frames. I like the pose and positioning of the wings and legs in this one.
In post-production, it’s a relatively simple matter to select the subject. Perhaps counterintuitively, the aim was to darken down the subject’s lighter feathers to retain texture and detail, but then to lighten up the entire bird so it stood out against a very dark background. And I left a small flower highlighted on the right as a target for the heron’s flight.