A lone Grey Heron

I had reason to go through my entire archive of images in the last couple of days in order to pick and print a selection of my best.  In the end I selected about 120 shots, and almost all have appeared on the blog.  One that hasn’t – apart from in a slideshow – is this image of what I believe is a Blue Grey Heron (thanks the Jamie in the comments for correcting me!), captured in Dublin Zoo earlier this year.

He was standing on a rock in the middle of the seal enclosure in the zoo when I photographed him, and he cooperated by giving a perfect side-on view to the camera.  The photo was taken during the Dublin Camera Club outing to the zoo where we had been granted early access to the zoo ahead of it opening to the general public.

That meant an early start of course, but the animals were all well awake – more than the photographers probably.  Particularly awake and active were the seals and  I was attempting, somewhat unsuccessfully, to photograph them when this guy arrived into the frame.

Like an antidote to the hyper-active seals who wouldn’t stay still and had pushed me to using a 1/1000s shutter speed (getting there with the assistance of a wide aperture and an ISO of 800), the blue heron stood perfectly still, but only for a few seconds – it was long enough for me to compose, focus, and capture this image.

I quite like it, and in particular how he stands out against the background of the water.  The lighting is all ambient light, but being early morning with an overcast sky to soften it down, is naturally soft and has a nice quality to it.