To me, photographing all white birds presents a rather difficult challenge. If the lighting is not perfect -- and it seldom is -- I spend a bit more time than usual, in post, trying to get the detail out of the bird. I try to expose to the right, without blowing out the whites, but I often end up taking the highlights all the way down.

The birds, particularly the white birds, seem to know that anyone with a camera wants the sun to be behind the camera, so they conspire to remain backlit. I swear I hear them laughing.

I did come upon a Great Egret who was between the sun and me. Usually, the bird will take off if I so much as try to reposition myself, no matter how slowly I do it. This was the first Great Egret ever to let me pass so close. I expected the bird to take off, any second, but it never did. Consequently, I was treated to a rather nice shot.

The Snowy Egrets, on the other hand, were not of a mind to cooperate. They were determined either to be backlit, or to bolt.

I think it's very helpful to reverse engineer photos. What I mean by this is that I look an at image and try to figure out what caused the flaw(s).

I recently took an image that is OOF. It took me the longest time to figure out why. Was I lacking DOF, was my focus was in the wrong place, or was there was camera movement, was it diffraction, or was it because I just didn't have the crisp look I wanted because of the mist rising off the water. Or ... was it something else???

Focal length 100mm
F/32
6 second exposure

Go ahead and guess. Feel free to ask me questions about how I took the image. And please ... feel free to post an image that has a flaw!

I think this could be a fun game, a good exercise, and a learning experience for all.

I like the logs on the foreground but I can see and equally nice shot with an angle change. I agree big time with B&W! When I take shot and it has very little color in general, I will hit the B&W button. You can tell immediately if there is a fit. I dropped it into LR and flipped to B&W and found a much more compelling picture almost without touching a slider but the devil made me tweak it a little.

You're correct very few people post the EXIF data. It's a50D Canon, 1/320, F/14, ISO 400 15-85MM@57.