Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Herons are one of my favorite birds to encounter. I often photograph them from my canoe on Horseshoe Lake near Parry Sound, Ontario. The problem is that they are often difficult to approach here in Ontario. While I was out shooting fall colours at Stubb’s Falls on the Little East River in Arrowhead Provincial Park I encountered a ridiculously , cooperative Great Blue Heron. I was able to get so close to this bird that I had to back-up, at times, due to the minimum focusing distance of my 80-400mm VR lens, which is 7.5 feet. The base of Stubb’s Falls has many large boulders in the river making it difficult to capture a clean background, but I tried to work with the difficult elements before me, to capture a sense of place for this bird as it hunted in the fast flowing waters of the Little East River.

Since this heron was being so cooperative I decided to try some long exposures to blur the water for creative effect. The three images below have had their backgrounds slightly blurred in photoshop. The white foam floating by in the background does create some distraction for me, but this was the scene before me and what I meant by difficult elements to work with. I hope you find them interesting nonetheless.