Egrets are common birds. And the more common the bird, the more photo opportunities it will present us. Preening is an essential part of a bird’s daily life. Birds preen their feathers to keep them in the best condition and remove dust, dirt, and parasites.
It is especially critical to nail the exposure when photographing white birds so that no detail is lost due to overexposure. I always use my camera in the manual mode and set the light metering to “spot metering”. First I will set the lowest ISO sensitivity value that the available light lets me.
Next, I choose an aperture value after taking the available light or desired depth of field, or both into consideration (generally between F/2.8 and F/8 for wildlife). With these two values set, I will spot meter the brightest area of the frame where I want to see every single detail and overexpose by two stops.
The histogram is my best friend. I look at the histogram immediately after making a couple of photos and readjust the exposure if needed. Once I have set my ISO, aperture, and shutter speed using this method, I do not have to change it at all until the intensity available light increases or decreases.
Using a camera in the automatic or one of the semi-automatic modes can only lead to disappointments. A camera’s in-built light meter reads the light reflecting into the lens and ultimately onto the electronic sensor or film.
On the basis of this information, the camera will compute the exposure settings. As we point our lens to different areas, the exposure settings will change automatically depending on the proportion of highlights, shadows, and middle tones in the frame (in the automatic or one of the semi-automatic modes).
However, the intensity of light falling on the bird will not change during this time (unless of course a cloud suddenly comes in the way of the sun or floats away from it).
So for example when we’re photographing a bird in flight, the background goes from brighter to darker as the bird lands on the ground. Because of this, the exposure values will change from frame to frame. You will find that the photos turn out brighter or darker than they should be.
This can be avoided if you learn how to use your camera in the manual mode, spot meter the light and read the histogram.
The exposure of an image can be corrected using image editing software such as Adobe Lightroom.
However such corrections introduce digital noise and will affect the overall quality of the image—this will be noticeable when you print your photographs.
And what’s the point of clicking photos that you cannot print, frame and happily share with the world?