outdoor photography

Golden-crowned Kinglet (after) Today I finally got a copy of Photoshop CC.  There's a new feature in this software that I'd been excited about trying out--shake reduction.  I wish I could use a tripod for all my shots, but the reality is that I'd miss a lot of shots if I used a tripod.  And since my lens does not have image stabilization, I run the risk of motion blur due to camera shake.  This tool is designed to help that.  The above image is after applying the filter, and the below image is before. The tool generates noise, so I chose the minimum amount of sharpening, and then I added smoothing to control the noise. Fully zoomed in, this photo is a bit noisier than the original, but otherwise, I think the effect works pretty well. Golden-crowned Kinglet (before) We don't get Golden-crowned Kinglets in Florida very often; in fact, this photo was taken in Washington State.  I liked the photo, but I was always a little troubled by the softness of ...

Bachman's Sparrow ISO 320 | 1/800sec | f/6.3 When I took the above photograph, I was pretty sure I was going to toss it out.  The sun was in front of me and to my right, and the bird was facing in a direction such that most of its face was cast in shadow.  This is a real exposure problem.  Without exposure compensation, the bird's face would be very dark.  But if I add exposure compensation to properly expose the bird's head, I would likely blow out the highlights of the photograph, including the sunlit portions of the bird.  You can use a flash in a situation like this, but I don't--I sometimes see birds flinch and/or fly away when using a flash, and I don't want to disturb the bird.  Using Aperture Priority mode and matrix (evaluative) metering, I decided to increase my exposure by +2/3 stop and hope for the best.  It turns out that when I loaded the photo in my computer the histogram showed that I had detail in the shadows and the highli...

Northern Mockingbird #1 (2200 x 1385 crop) Canon EOS 7D with EF 400mm f/5.6L (ISO 250 | f5/6 | 1/500sec) Lightroom Adjustments: Vibrance +62 Sharpening: +25 | Luminance Noise Reduction: +10 I acquired a Canon EOS 7D in September, and now that I've been using it extensively for a few months I thought it would be good to write reviews of its various features.  This camera has been on the market for a while and there are many reviews already available, but I thought it would be helpful to review the features of this camera that make it hands down the best Canon APS-C DSLR for wildlife photography.  In the past I've used the Canon Rebel 2000 and Elan 7 (film) and the 10D, 40D and 50D (digital), and all of these cameras have been wonderful cameras that have served me well.  But the 7D easily out shines them all. In this review, I'd like to examine the ISO performance of the camera. Before I begin, though, it may be useful for me to make a cou...

Northern Cardinal I like vibrant Reds! If you've read enough of my posts, you've probably read that I have red-green colorblindness.  My colorblindness is probably the single greatest obstacle I face in both birding and photography.I suspect I'm not the only color-blind wildlife photographer in the world, so I thought it would be helpful to describe how it affects me and how I cope with it.  In some ways, my coping mechanisms, if followed consistently, would actually be good birding and photography practices anyway. Black and White Warbler one of the few birds I see just like you For those of you who aren't colorblind, it's an interesting problem because it has to do with a deficiency in perception, so it's really impossible for me to describe how I see things compared to how a "normal" person sees things; I've never seen anything the way a "normal" person sees it.  There is a site  that attempts to duplicate how a colorblind ...

Trees at Circle B Bar This past weekend I spent two mornings at the Circle B Bar Reserve.  As I was returning to my car from a morning a bird photography, I found myself walking through many Live Oaks.  These are absolutely beautiful trees.  I don't often photograph them because I frequently only take with me my 400mm lens.  But more and more I've been bringing a long my 10mm-22mm lens and 17mm-85mm lenses just so that I can be ready for more wide angle photographic moments.  These trees captured my attention so much that I decided it was worth changing lenses to spend time photographing the trees. Trees at Circle B Bar For these photos, I simulated a "slide montage" in my image editing software.  I duplicated the image as a separate layer, applied a Gaussian blur to the bottom layer (set to 45) and then set the layering mode to "multiply."  This gives you one "color" layer and one "detail" layer.  When these two layers are com...

White Morph Reddish Egret #1 For wildlife photography, I've had to become accustomed to taking many photographs of the same subject.  If I see a scene I like, I  shoot it at 6.5 frames per second.  I'm often struck by how often very subtle differences between photographs can have very significant effects on the overall feel of the photograph.  Even photographs taken a fraction of a second apart can have a very different feel. White Morph Reddish Egret #2 Yesterday I was at Fort De Soto, and a white morph Reddish Egret decided to walk right by me.  I had just under two minutes with this magnificent bird, and I took 77 photographs.  That of course is the fun part.  The challenge is going through all 77 of them to select a few that I think are the best.  All the photographs were exposed properly, and they were all sharp.  The sun was casting pretty light on the egret, and the egret is one of my favorite birds. But slight variatio...

American Bittern Photography in harsh lighting can be very difficult, especially when the sun is in front of you.  When this is the case, the top of your subject will often be much more bright than the front.  This can create situation in which there is too much contrast for your subject to look natural.  While you can't always fix the situation, if shoot in RAW, you may find that sometimes you can, and you can frequently improve your photographs with software. American Bittern If you're shooting in RAW, your image contains more information than a JPEG file can hold, and so if you do your editing with the RAW file, there's more data to work with, especially in the highlights. If your exposure has retained some detail in the highlights, there are at least two thing you can try in order to make your photograph look more natural.  I'm going to tell you what I do in Lightroom, but if you use a different program, you may find that it does the ...

Little Blue Heron I strongly believe in the "garbage in, garbage out" principle in photography.  The more you expose your photographs properly when you take the picture, the less you have to do and the more you can do when you have your photographs in the computer.  In the field, I'm not as concerned with taking pictures that look pretty right out of the camera as I am with taking pictures that retain detail in both the light and dark areas of the photograph, if possible, and I'm especially concerned with the light and dark portions of the bird.  Now there are exceptions, like when shooting silhouettes, but generally speaking, that's my goal. The following description of how I edit photographs will be based on Lightroom, but there are many software programs that do all the same things I describe here.  They may have different names, but you should be able to find the the right controls in your software program to do what I've displayed below.  If you cli...

Eastern Phoebe (of the 2 dozen or so photographs I took of this bird, I kept 3) If you're like me, you'd much rather be out taking pictures than at home in front of your computer editing them. For me, this means two things: 1) get your exposure and composition right in camera as much as possible and 2) get a workflow that allows to store and edit your photos quickly.  Different people have different budgets, different software and different personalities, so there's no one workflow that's perfect for everyone.  But generally speaking, there are some basic steps that ought to be included in any process.  What we want is to get your your photos on your computer, make adjustments to get your photos looking as good as possible, and delete those photos you'll never use.  Believe it or not, that last part is the toughest. Eastern Phoebe (Key Words: FL Locations | Lake Lotus Park | and | Birds | Flycatcher | Eastern Phoebe) On average I take several hundred pho...

Red-Bellied Woodpecker (after editing) Now that we've covered important topics like exposure , composition , and interpreting subjects , we need to consider what to do once you get your photographs into your computer.  Nearly every picture you take can be improved by working on it with software.  But it's important to choose a software program that will work for you. Same Image Before Editing (how embarrassing!) There are several factors that I believe are important to have in in your software, and I'm listing them here in order of importance: Photo Management .  If you take a lot of photographs, you need to be able to keep track of them so that you can find them again after you take them.  You need a powerful photo management tool to let you keep track of your photographs.  I rate all the photographs I keep and use hierarchical keywords.  Every photograph I keep gets labeled by subject and location.  This way, if I want to find...