This is possibly the best 360° shot I ever managed to get. This normally very shy grey heron came close to the camera and stood perfectly still long enough to get this perfectly crisp image - and so did the two mallard on the right. The camera was taking a photo every 30 seconds, with a shutter time of 20 seconds. In other words, all three birds didn't move a muscle for 20 seconds just at the right moment!
Not to mention, those grey herons are rather rare around here. They're more common along the coast. But we're 15 miles inland and they seldom stop by here. I only managed to capture one on camera once before:
I've been keeping the camera outside in my custom-made waterproof enclosure for five days now, hoping to capture ducks up close if they got used to seeing the camera on the beach long enough. Either that or grab timelapse videos of northern lights.
But in five days, the ducks never came anywhere close to the camera, and the weather has been lousy most of the time.
I started the camera yesterday night in the vague hope that the sky would clear during the night. It didn't, and I stopped the camera this morning before going to work. When I came back to check what was on the SD card, I found this guy and its friends in a frame only minutes before I turned off the camera!
When you're lucky you're lucky.
Great shot, but I didn't see the mallards at first, and so I thought your title was insinuating that this heron had no friends. Happy to be wrong.
That's one of the appeals of 360° photos: you have to look around to understand the scene fully 🙂
Honestly, I had no idea herons could stand feet away from ducks and not fly off immediately. they're so easy to spook.