Juvenile Great Blue Herons on nest
Recently I became aware of a small heronry that consists of 3 nests thus far not too far from the family cottage near Parry Sound, Ontario. I drove down the highway to the location early one morning last weekend for a few photos. The juveniles are still at the nests, but are almost as large as the adults now. I counted a total of 8 young birds on the three nests. These nests are in tall dead trees standing in a large beaver pond. Usuing my 80-400mm VR lens I was still a little short for the composition I was hoping for. The solution here was to mount my camera on my tripod without the legs extended for maximum stability. Since the highway is high above the beaver pond I was still shooting straight at the nest. Next I selected the mirror lock-up feature to minimize vibrations from the slapping action of the mirror and thus render a sharper image. I then waited for three pleasing head angles from the juvenile birds. Once I shot the sharpest image possible I cropped it slightly for the composition I was hoping for and evicted some distracting elements from the background to render a more pleasing image. These distracting elements were removed by using a variety of quick masks and clone stamp tool. The original capture can be seen below.
Andrew McLachlan 