Great Egret (arial stretch)

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Taken last March at the Venice, FL. The egret is in full mating plumage and is performing the 'arial stretch courtship display'. Shot with usual setup, Canon Elan IIE, 300L/4.0 IS with 1.4x APO. Kodak E100S, sunny sixteen at 500/f8. Thank you for comments, Happy Holidays to everybody!

-- Rob Pailes (rpailes@peganet.com), December 24, 1998

Answers

As I sit here pondering this shot I'm trying to plug it into one of the convenient categories of wildlife images that exist in my brain, but it doesn't work.

As a portrait the subject isn't big enough in the frame and the lighting doesn't do anything for details of the animal's physique, if that's the right term for body and feather structure.

As a behavioral shot, I have no context for the action shown. Is it mating? Fighting? Just jumping into the air?

As an environmental portrait, there isn't enough of the environment shown to know where or in what kind of place the animal lives.

As a graphic, the bird is rather awkward.

Maybe somebody else will have an enlightening comment.

This is the second time tonight I'm stymied by a posted image. Maybe I just need to add some new categories to my collection, all help appreciated.

Frank

-- Frank Kolwicz (bb389@lafn.org), December 25, 1998.


Frank's comments made me look at the picture again before I posted. For the most part, I tend to agree with him, but I like the bird itself. Something environmental or some context would be nice, but the shot is impressive anyway, just for the fact that you got the shot of the bird in this behavior. It is good in other words, it just doesn't really fit a category very well.

-- Brad (reloader@webtv.net), December 25, 1998.

Frank, IF you would have read the caption I submitted with the image, you would have known that this shot is of mating behavior. In a large volume book covering all the herons of the world, in the overall mating and breeding section of the book, there is a diagram of this exact position depicted, with the description 'aerial stretch courtship display'. As for the bird being graphically awkward, as a bird photographer, I find this to be an excellant example of the heron's beauty and grace during courtship.

It is with the context that I had a problem. The image is cropped heavily from the right. If left uncropped, the branch the bird was about to land on is in the bottom right corner of the image. I thought about leaving it in to show some context, but that left a large area of blue sky filling the majority of the image. I decided to crop it out. Had I left it in, the image might have offered more context to help define the picture. As for creating a new 'category' for natural history photograhy, I do not think I have or that you need to.

Here is the uncropped image. Which one do you prefer?

Thanks, Rob



-- Rob Pailes (rpailes@peganet.com), December 29, 1998.


Rob,

I do like it better. That little hint of foliage, combined with the heron's now way off-center location, gives just enough sense of diagonal travel to make the image much more interesting.

Regarding the mating behavior, I feel that if you have to explain an image, then it doesn't quite work. If it was a first-class professional image to start with and then you explained the behavior for some text publisher or other interested party, that would be icing on the cake. Or, if I have to be enough of a dedicated heron-fancier to know the significance of this position in order to appreciate the image, then you've lost me. The image has to stand on its' own, that's what these critiques are all about.

As I think Bob Atkins points out in the guidelines, we don't really care what hell you went through to get the image or (I would add) what previously undocumented behavior it shows, it is the image and nothing but the image, so help you God! when it comes to critiques. I am sure that some viewers are interested in the natural history importance of your pix, as I am, but that doesn't affect my critique.

Regards,

Frank

-- Frank Kolwicz (bb389@lafn.org), December 29, 1998.


Frank, thank you for responding with the further input. I have been wondering how the image would fare with and without cropping.

As for your comments about what the HELL I went through to get the shot, I don't remember telling you! As for going so far as to say that the natural history significance means nothing to the critique process, I am afraid you have totally confused me. If that were so, why did your original critique focus on where this image falls into natural history categories? Seems a bit ironic to me.

I totally enjoy taking part in this forum, and by no means do I want you to mistake my banter with you as rude or agressive. I enjoy the feedback and criticisms, although sometimes I wish that the condescending remarks would be left in the head on not put onto the screen!

-- Rob Pailes (rpailes@peganet.com), December 29, 1998.



Well, I agree that the uncropped image is better too. As far as the critique is concerned, I agree that knowing what you went through to get the shot is meaningless, and as you said you didn't tell us. I also agree that there should be no need to tell us what the behavior is just to critique the shot, but I don't agree that an unusual picture like this has a snowball's chance in Hell of conveying what is going on, unless you are a Heron expert, or at least a birder. That doesn't make it a bad image. My opinion of it would have been the same whether I knew what was going on or not. I did like the fact that we were told what was going on, as it lets us know what the photographer is trying to show. I have a few shots that I plan to post when I get the equipment that are not technically perfect, but the convey something to ME. I will probably post something to the effect of "I know blah blah blah, but what is your impression of the feeling of this picture?" With regards to the Heron picture, I could nit-pic little details, but the fact is that capturing the behavior itself, if nothing else, makes the picture quite good. My feeling, since I brought them up? Awe of being in the right place at the right time!

-- Brad (reloader@webtv.net), December 30, 1998.

Rob,

What I was trying to say and failed, obviously, is that there are different criteria for judging the success of any image: pure photographic esthetics and publishability are two that I frequently use. I apoligize for the confusion I caused you by mixing them up.

I intend to critique any image here posted as esthetic exercizes primarily and only get into captions or essays about their context incidentally. The example I referred to regarding the effort or danger (hell) involved in making the image was just that, an example of the kinds of things that get mixed up in critiques, not a criticism of this image and it was definitiely not an expletive (I said "what hell" not "what THE hell").

By using "natural history categories" I guess is where I got most confusing. I am used to thinking in those terms and they are commonly used to cover the kinds of images published or shown in galleries. They refer to similar categories used in art - portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, worklife (I don't know what that actual term is), abstracts, etc. Having such terms makes it easier to discuss art and photos and I was merely observing that my vocabulary of categories was insufficient to put some kind of verbal handle on your image without referring to a caption or essay from you. The term "arial stretch" in your title meant nothing to me, that's what I meant by having to be an experienced birder or heron fancier, maybe that term would mean something to one of them, thus clarifying your intent for the image and giving us something more to discuss.

A critique primarily involves analyzing technical and artistic elements in the image and these have little or nothing to do with an image's success in showing behavior, for instance. That's what I mean by "it is the image and nothing but the image, so help you God! when it comes to critiques": that was a little too much emphasis, I guess. We aren't primarily here to discuss anyone's success as a biologist, we're discussing photographs. A great photo is a great photo whether it depicts something biologically interesting or not; a bad photo is still bad even if it is of great biological significance. The esthetics of the image and it's potential use are related, but separate, things. An esthetic element, such as a background, can contribute to both aspects of an image, it can also be the subject's environment as a biological element.

I hope this isn't even more confusing as it is quite possible that you don't think of images this way; maybe nobody else does, either! I'll have to take my chances on that.

In the mean time, please accept my apologies for making you think I was being harsh, sarcastic or condescending. I just wasn't clear.

Frank

-- Frank Kolwicz (bb389@lafn.org), January 02, 1999.


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