Sunday, March 8, 2009



A snake bird on the prowl.

9 comments:

Chesney said...

What more can I say - STUNNING! I love your work!

MevetS said...

@ Chesney: How do you do that? I didn't even finish posting it and you've commented already! :-) Thank you very much for your comments. I'm glad you enjoy the images.

mljrbg said...

I'm posting my comments in one post because I would be saying the same thing for each of these shots.

Amazing, fabulous, stunning, wonderful, exquisite, unbelievable, gorgeous and on and on!! Everything about these photographs is picture perfect. You have captured some very unusual sights. The color and clarity is outstanding. In other words I love all of them!!!!!

mljrbg said...

addendum...

I'm interested in how you achieved such incredible results. How did you do your bokeh shot?

Anonymous said...

Beautiful shots - the clarity and crispness are wonderful. I hadn't found your blog until you commented on mine but I've added you to my links and I'll be back to check out your future posts.

BobbieCoughlin said...

What I like about this shot is the contrast between the vertical curve of the bird's neck and the horizontal curves in the water.

Anonymous said...

Very cool bokeh! Such interesting reflections almost steal the show from the bird. Great shot!

Anonymous said...

I'll just echo Mary Lou. This is almost trippy.

MevetS said...

@ mljrbg: The EXIF details tell me that I shot this image in aperture priority, at f/14 for 1/125 sec at ISO 800 at 400 mm focal length. The camera was tripod mounted. The camera used was a Canon 20D and the lens a Canon 100-400 mm IS L zoom. IS was off.

I was trying to photograph the anhinga as it would surface after diving for fish. I knew where it had gone under, but where it would come up was uncertain and catching it required a bit of luck. And since I couldn't predetermine where it would popup, the background was a bit of luck as well.

I selected the aperture of f/14 so as to maximize the depth of field, so that even if focus was a little off the image would still be acceptably sharp. This forced me to up the ISO to get a relatively fast shutter speed because I'd have little time to acquire and shoot the bird before it would dive again.

Finally, I took a lot of shots, many blurry birds, if the bird was still in the frame at all.

I hope this answers your question.

@ Everyone else: Thanks.