Story of the Image
For me this was a dream image as I had been trying to get a nice picture of this species for over 3 years now
Location & Species
Agami herons are a considered to be one of the most enigmatic aquatic birds in all of Latin America due to their vibrant hues. What makes an image like this even more special is how difficult they are to see and photograph. I traveled to the area of Los Chiles in Costa Rica to photograph this bird.
Gear/Preparing the Scene
This project was a good way to start testing my new Canon R5 which is my first mirrorless camera ever. I combined it with my trusty Canon 600mm F4 lens. To get to this spot we took a motor boat for 20 minutes. The total wait time to see the bird was around an hour.
Composing the Shot
Due to the extremely shy nature of the bird I had to be extremely patient to compose the right frame but in my mind I knew I had to shoot horizontal to get the entire bird in the frame. While is extremely important to get eye level with the bird to get a pleasing composition i suggest phtographers to try different angles and in doing so one can notice that i was shooting at an angle above the bird to get the reflection.
Perfecting in Post-Processing
Initial camera raw edits:
Step 1:
For the initial edits, I set a custom white balance to bring down the yellows. This was the only way to focus on the purplish-blue head of the bird. I chose a custom setting since the pre set white balances provided by adobe did not match the actual colors.
The next step was to crop the image in the format I liked – horizontal
Next, I ran auto contrast to fix the overall contrast of the image.
Next step was color balance. My color balance settings are just a reflection of how i percieve my image to be. Using this method i try to get as close as possible to the original scene and the bird itself. So for example in this image i increased the cyans and blues to match the dark tones of the bird.
Next, I added brightness and contrast to the image.
Next, I resized the image at 1800 pixels on the long side. and now It it was ready for sharpening. I added 110 point of sharpening with a radius of 1 to achieve my preferred sharpening.
Next step was to save in the right profile and save the image.
For web prints I use sRGB while for prints I use Adobe RGB
The final step is to save it as a jpeg at the highest resolution as shown below:
Final Image:
About the Bird
This vibrant bird is also known as ‘Hummingbird Heron’ or ‘Chestnut-bellied Heron’ and can be spotted in the flooded lowland forest and slow-moving water bodies of central and south America. Being so unique, they have their own genus ‘Agamia’ which is a Cayenne Indian word for ‘forest-bird’. Their neck is the longest among the New World Heron species that help them to fish from river banks or branches hanging over the water bodies. They are reclusive and prefer to forage in dense vegetation.
