Feed me! Great Egret chicks.

Great Egret chicks in the nest. St. Augustine Alligator Farm, St Augustine FL

The Florida Birding and Photo Fest is a week later this year than last, and you can really see it in the age of the Great Egret nestlings. Last year there were many nests of newly hatched Egrets. This year, some of the nestlings are ready to fledge. This is another of the “laugh-right-out-loud” images that yesterday’s Day Poem was based on. When I first pulled it up for processing, I did indeed laugh out loud. 🙂

Nikon P900 at 1100mm equivalent field of view. 1/800th @ ISO 100 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.

This is the Day Poem I mentioned.

Sometimes when processing my pictures
after a long day of shooting,
an image will pop up on my tablet
that makes me laugh out loud.
It is delight, pure and simple.
It may be a bird in an odd pose
or a chipmunk looking clownish…
it may be the way the clouds paint
the landscape with shadow, or
an unguarded expression caught
unaware on a familiar face…some
chance juxtaposition of unlikely
elements within the frame…some
fraction of a second frozen and held
up for our attention, our admiration,
our amusement and delight. That
is the real power of photography… to
wake our wonder, our compassion, our
soul, by a gentle tugging on the eye.
Those laugh-out-loud-images are
what keep me out and about daily
with a camera in my hand.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *