bird photography : snowy egret

John saw this Snowy Egret while walking along the harbor's edge outside his hotel room on Mission Bay in San Diego. Though John was a bit too close to get a full-body shot of the egret, he still managed to capture quite an interesting shot of the bird's 'hairdo.'

Equipment: Canon EOS 30D Canon EF 300mm f4L IS with 1.4x Teleconverter Settings: f8; 1/2000 sec.; focal length at 420 mm; ISO 200 Date: June 29, 2006 9:03 pm Location: Mission Bay / San Diego, CA Photography Notes: Though taken relatively early in the evening (at 6:03 pm PDT), the egret's position in deep shade plus the necessity of a 2/3 stop exposure compensation to preserve all of the bird's white details rendered the background a very interesting shadow that when balanced in post-processing shows noise that is not necessarily unpleasant.