B&W Wood Stork

Gallery: AvianPosted March 16, 201581 views5 comments

Hi all! Been away chasing owls and waterfowl in BC with Jenaya and Josiah, and then down with a ridiculously tenacious late-winter cold. Interesting that on the night of a wild spring snowstorm I would choose to dig into some images from Florida...

I found this wood stork feeding in the shallows on Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge on Florida's East Coast.

While I have several frames of the stork feeding, I liked this one with its foot coming forward out of the water.

I intentionally shot this high-key, and while the colour version adds a little interest in the bird itself perhaps, I wanted to try a B&W conversion and decided to go that way.

Please view the LARGER version if you have the time, and of course I welcome any comments or suggestions for improvement.

I have no idea why I lost the exif on this file, but I don't seem to have the camera settings here.

Nikon D300
Nikkor AF-S 300mm f/4D IF-ED with TC-14EII teleconverter
monopod mounted

Comments

5 comments

Comment posted by Hans Overduin on March 16, 2015 at 9:23 AM

Hello John, sorry to hear about your cold. The image appeals to me a lot, I do tend to like these style of high key images, and this one is for sure among them. Pose, reflection and conversion to B&W all work very well together in creating this pleasant image. Great piece of work, IMHO. Have a wonderful day, Cheers, Hans

Registered on August 31, 2011, 491 Posts, 3807 Comments

Comment posted by Steve Thompson on March 16, 2015 at 6:39 PM

Hi John, I've come back to this image a few times trying to decide what I thought of it. I like the high key look and the pose of the Stork with the raised foot is great.I also like the B&W treatment. I was a little indifferent about the blank white space on the left. But the more I looked at it I realized I would like it either way.Sweet piece of work! Hope you're feeling better.

Registered on August 7, 2014, 125 Posts, 2319 Comments

Comment posted by Patrick O'Healy on March 16, 2015 at 10:00 PM

John,
This is a lovely artistic shot. Your work is simply stunning and the feedback you give others is priceless.

Registered on March 13, 2011, 326 Posts, 1679 Comments

Comment posted by Philip Hodgkins on March 17, 2015 at 4:00 PM

Good b/w work, John. Excellent tonal range despite your HK approach.

John Nikon View 2 gives you editable exif information for all raw image files. A huge savings in time for me, because it is just cut/paste and edit.

Registered on July 24, 2006, 2741 Posts, 12349 Comments

Comment posted by Kurt Bowman on March 17, 2015 at 10:28 PM

Nice decision for a HK B&W John. Really digging this one. I like the amount of negative space you left in the image and the slight reflection. nice work!

Registered on June 19, 2008, 1005 Posts, 8028 Comments