Herons are My Nemesis

Ever since I started photography seriously, I’ve had one challenge that continued to elude me – to create a photograph of a blue heron that I was happy with. That last part, “that I’m happy with”, has been the problem.

I’ve created many mediocre photographs of herons, but I’ve always had the worst luck with it.  If I saw a heron in the perfect position, great background, no distractions then I wouldn’t have the right camera gear with me to capture it (or worse, no camera gear at all!). If I had the gear, then the heron would be in the weeds, behind branches, whatever was the worst possible location.

But finally last week, while shooting with some friends at Hog’s Back Park in Ottawa, things finally came together. A heron was fishing in the falls, close enough that even my Fuji 56mm lens (85mm full-frame equivalent) was long enough to make a reasonable photograph. Sure, I wished I had my 55-200mm for a close up, but I didn’t. The 56mm was the longest lens I had.

Above is the first photograph of a heron that I have made that I am reasonably happy with. Sure, I’m still critical of it, and I want to do a better job with the post-processing. But overall I’m pretty happy. It’s a nice, natural environment and the heron is involved in natural heron activity.

But let’s go back to the idea of having the “right gear with me”. What if I did have my 55-200mm lens? Would I have made the photograph above? Probably not. I probably would have said, “there’s a bird, better put on my long lens”, and then I would have shot a whole bunch of close-ups of the heron, with little or no context beyond a bit of water and some rocks.

By being limited with my gear choice, I was forced into finding a more creative way to photograph the heron. I couldn’t zoom in, at least not without falling into the waterfall. If I cropped the image to a close-up, I wouldn’t have enough pixels left to fill an iPhone screen (the image above is uncropped). And there would be nothing to show the viewer the environment the bird was in.

Being restricted in my gear choice actually helped me finally make a photograph that I have been trying to make for more than 10 years. A photograph that, once I get the processing right, might actually get a spot on my wall.