Mangrove and Cormorant

This was taken on a morning when everything fell in place.  The fog was lifting and the bright Florida sun was coming through.  The cormorant was preening but not moving too much.  The fog and sunlight combined and totally erased the line where the water meets the sky.  I took this photo on the Blackpoint Drive which is located in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Reserve near Titusville, Fl. 

Cormorant

This cormorant was proudly posing on his perch on the Silver River near Ocala, FL.  These birds allow for relatively close approaches, especially if you are in a slowly moving boat.  These birds are very common on Florida'a waterways and shorelines.

Cormorant

This is a composite image using a portrait of a cormorant with a really bad background and a beautiful sunset over Lake Weir near my home.  I don't do a lot of these because I generally prefer to take images as I find them.  I used Photoshop Elements 8 to do this and it only took about 15 minutes.  The cormorant was shot with a little bit of fill flash and I realize that the photo is a little unnatural with the mix of frontlighting and backlighting.  When I look at this photo I simply regret that this bird didn't pick a better background when he posed for the portrait.