{"id":1562,"date":"2010-12-05T20:15:02","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T02:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/?p=1562"},"modified":"2025-10-05T19:29:40","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T00:29:40","slug":"great-egret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2010\/12\/05\/great-egret\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Egret – Light on White"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GreatGreat Egret in flight – Light on White –\u00a0<\/strong>D200, handheld, f6.3, 1\/500, ISO 200, 70-300mm VR at 82mm, natural light<\/span><\/p>\n

I do not normally take many images of birds in flight that are almost directly over my head but I made an exception in the case of this Great Egret because of how the light affected the whites of the bird and the thin cirrus clouds in the sky overhead.<\/p>\n

Exposure of white birds can be very challenging, if the exposure is too light some of the whites will be blown and will show very little detail.<\/p>\n

If the exposure is too dark the whites can look gray or muddy and spots of noise may show up straight from the camera or in post processing.<\/p>\n

I used no exposure compensation when I photographed this great egret. I think the thin clouds helped to diffuse the light.<\/p>\n

This image was taken at 8:20 am in the month of May, so the sun had been up for a bit over two hours. For exposing\u00a0 a white bird it was probably getting late.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0had been kneeling in the shallow waters of a lagoon when I saw this egret heading my way so I stood up and got ready for the bird to circle overhead as it made an approach to land.<\/p>\n

I wanted to stand so I had a complete 360 degree range of motion, I am glad I did that or I may have missed this shot.<\/p>\n

I was using my 70-300mm VR lens because the lens I normally used for photographing in Florida was being repaired.<\/p>\n

I’ve heard people say you need at least a 400mm lens to photograph birds, I sure didn’t need that reach for this image.<\/p>\n

Great Egrets<\/span><\/a> are found on every continent except Antarctica and can live as long as 25 years. In Florida they were more used to human presence\u00a0 and allowed closer approaches than they\u00a0do here in Utah where they are a bit more skittish.<\/p>\n

I love the beautiful details present in the white of this egret, how the wings appear translucent plus the spread of the wings and tail. The thin cirrus clouds against the blue sky are very appealing to me too.<\/p>\n

Life is<\/em> good.<\/p>\n

Mia<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a><\/span> to see more of my Great Egret photos plus facts and information about this species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Great Egret (Ardea alba) in flight, a balance of whites and light<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25,704,362],"tags":[4004,4272,215,4101,5132,743,351,4052,4122,363,4204,519,3980,4018,165,4001,9720,1085,102],"class_list":["post-1562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avian","category-florida","category-fort-de-soto-county-park","category-great-egrets","tag-adult","tag-ardea-alba","tag-bird-id","tag-clouds","tag-coastal","tag-egret","tag-egrets","tag-flight","tag-flying","tag-great-egret","tag-light","tag-nature","tag-pinellas-county","tag-sky","tag-spring","tag-wading-bird","tag-white","tag-whites","tag-wildlife"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/great-egret-mia-mcpherson-flight-overhead-5666.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p11Mom-pc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":24365,"url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2015\/05\/23\/snowy-egrets-on-the-gulf-coast\/","url_meta":{"origin":1562,"position":0},"title":"Snowy Egrets on the Gulf Coast","author":"Mia McPherson","date":"May 23, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm hoping to add images of Snowy Egrets to my portfolio this summer that might be taken at Farmington Bay WMA or up north at Bear River National Wildlife Refuge.","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Snowy Egret in flight with clouds in the distance, Fort De Soto County Park, Pinellas County, Florida","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/snowy-egret-flight-mia-mcpherson-2041.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/snowy-egret-flight-mia-mcpherson-2041.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, 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image was taken in Florida in 2009, the beautiful blue in the background is the water of the Gulf of Mexico.","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Great Egret close up, Fort De Soto County Park, Pinellas County, Florida","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/great-egret-close-up-mia-mcpherson-2756.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/great-egret-close-up-mia-mcpherson-2756.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/great-egret-close-up-mia-mcpherson-2756.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, 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Florida","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/great-egret-landing-mia-mcpherson-9898.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/great-egret-landing-mia-mcpherson-9898.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/great-egret-landing-mia-mcpherson-9898.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/great-egret-landing-mia-mcpherson-9898.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":18637,"url":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2015\/01\/18\/great-egrets-big-white-wading-birds\/","url_meta":{"origin":1562,"position":4},"title":"Great Egrets – Big White Wading Birds","author":"Mia McPherson","date":"January 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"After posting Great Blue Heron images yesterday I decided to post images of Great Egrets which are also a large wading bird species this morning.","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Great Egret in flight, Fort De Soto County Park, Pinellas County, Florida","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/great-egret-flight-mia-mcpherson-2568.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/great-egret-flight-mia-mcpherson-2568.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/great-egret-flight-mia-mcpherson-2568.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, 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Snowy Egrets (Egretta thula) are great birds to practice getting exposures of the whites set correctly.","rel":"","context":"In "Birds"","block_context":{"text":"Birds","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/category\/avian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Hunting Snowy Egret, Fort De Soto County Park, Pinellas County, Florida","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/snowy-egret-mia-mcpherson-5228.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/snowy-egret-mia-mcpherson-5228.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/snowy-egret-mia-mcpherson-5228.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/snowy-egret-mia-mcpherson-5228.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}