Creating a Two-Puffin Composite...

The Streak Continues: 301

Yesterday I made more progress on my 2013 tax return. Swim, nap, meditation, ice bath, and a another good night’s sleep. This blog post, the 301st in a row, took me about three hours to prepare. It was published at about 7:00am from my home in Indian Lake Estates, FL.

The 3rd draft of the DPP 4.0 guide is now in the hands of our skilled, amazingly-qualified group of volunteer reviewers.

To show your appreciation for my efforts here, we do ask that you use our the B&H and Amazon affiliate links on the right side of the blog for all of your purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the BIRDS AS ART Online Store, especially Gitzo tripods, Wimberley tripod heads, and the like. We sell only what I used, tested, and can depend on. We will not sell you junk. We know what you need to make creating great images easy and fun. And we are always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

You can find the following items in the store: Gitzo tripods, Mongoose M3.6 and Wimberley heads, plates, low feet, and accessories, flash brackets, , Delkin e-film Pro Compact Flash Cards, LensCoat products, and our unique line-up of educational materials including ABP I & II, Digital Basics, Site and Set-up e-Guides, Canon and Nikon Camera Users and AF e-Guides, and MP-4 Photoshop video tutorials among others.

I would of course appreciate your using our B&H affiliate links for all of your major gear, video, and electronic purchases. For the photographic stuff mentioned in the paragraph above we, meaning BAA, would of course greatly appreciate your business. Here is a huge thank you to the many who have been using our links on a regular basis and visiting the BAA Online store as well.

GALAPAGOS Photo Cruise of a Lifetime IPT/The Complete Galapagos Photographic Experience. July 14-28, 2015 on the boat. 13 FULL and two half-days of photography: $12,499. Limit 14 including the leader:/Openings: 5.

Though my two-week Galapagos Photo-Cruises are without equal there are too many openings on the 2015 cruise. If you are at all interested, please get in touch with me via e-mail and I will shoot you the current itinerary. I would be glad to design a personalized payment plan for you.

My trip has world’s best guide, a killer itinerary, a great boat (the Samba), and the best leader with eight Galapagos cruises under his belt. Pre-trip and pre-landing location-specific gear advice. In-the-field photo instruction and guidance. Jeez, I almost forgot: fine dining at sea! See yesterday’s blog post here and scroll down for some great images and complete details.

Selling Your Used Photo Gear Through BIRDS AS ART

Selling your used (or like-new) photo gear through the BAA Blog or via a BAA Online Bulletin is a great idea. We charge only a 5% commission. One of the more popular used gear for sale sites charges a minimum of 20% plus assorted fees! Yikes. The minimum item price here is $500 (or less for a $25 fee). If you are interested please e-mail with the words Items for Sale Info Request cut and pasted into the Subject line :). Stuff that is priced fairly–I offer free pricing advice, usually sells in no time flat. In the past few months, we have sold just about everything in sight. You can see all of the current listing here. Next is a new item, today’s featured listing:

Used Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS (Image Stabilizer) USM Lens

Dan Womack is offering a used Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS (Image Stabilizer) USM lens in excellent condition with clean glass with a few small nicks on the lens hood for $5150. B&H is offering a virtually identical used “old 500” for $6,299.95; you can save more than $1000 by grabbing Dan’s lens asap. The sale includes the front leather hood, the rear dust cap, the original case with keys, and insured shipping to US addresses only. Your lens will be shipped only after your check clears unless other arrangements are made.

Please contact Dan via e-mail or by phone at 337 412 1898.

This image was also and obviously created on the first UK Puffins and Gannets IPT. Again I used the hand held Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 2X III, and the Canon EOS-1D X. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 stop as framed: 1/800 sec. at f/5.6 in Av mode. Cloudy WB.

Five sensors to the right and one row above the Central Sensor/AI Servo-Surround/Rear Focus AF as framed, active at the moment of exposure. (Be sure to see the BreezeBrowser screen capture below.) Learn everything there is to know about the 1D X and 5D III AF systems including how to manage the various AF Area Selection Modes, when to use which one, and several ways to move the AF sensor around in my 1D X AF Guide and the 5D Mark III User’s Guide. Click here to see the latest version of the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version. .

File: _Y7O6528: Date/Time: 2014:07:03 12:09:13

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The First Keeper

The image above is the first keeper from an 8-frame series created over the course of about 2 seconds. I love the head angle of the bird on the puffin on the right, the one holding all the sand eels.

This image was created on the first UK Puffins and Gannets IPT. I used the hand held Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 2X III, and the Canon EOS-1D X. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 stop as framed: 1/800 sec. at f/5.6 in Av mode. Cloudy WB.

File: _Y7O6531: Date/Time: 2014:07:03 12:09:15

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The Second Keeper

The image above is the second keeper from an 8-frame series created over the course of about 2 seconds. In this one I love the head up pose of the out-of-focus puffin on our left, but the head angle of the bird with the fish is less than ideal with the puffin’s head turned away from us perhaps one-half of one degree. Compare the head angle of the bird on the right here with the head angle of the bird on the right in the opening image….

My choice was to create a composite featuring the bird with the fish from frame _Y7O6528 and the out-of-focus bird from frame _Y7O6531. See image next for the optimized composite image.

The optimized composite image.

The Optimized Composite Image

For those comfortable with working with Regular Layer Masks creating a composite like this is child’s play. I put the whole of image _Y7O6531 on its own layer (CTRL A/CTRL J), used the Move Tool to drag it on top of image _Y7O6528, added a Regular Layer Mask, and painted away the bird on the right (B/D/X).

Then I eliminated the scar on the right hand bird’s face, did some background softening with a large, soft, 30% opacity Clone Stamp Tool while employing Denise Ippolito’s Protective Cloning on a Layer technique, reduced the YELLOW saturation, and applied my NIK Color EFEX Pro 50/50 recipe to the face of the bird with the fish only (after selecting the face with the Quick Selection Tool). I lightened that layer only. As the NIK layer had brightened the face of the right hand bird a tad too much I applied a 30% layer of reduced contrast.

You can learn more about hand holding the 300 2.8/2X III TC combo here.

Why the Crop?

Why did I crop the optimized composite image from the left and from above?

This is the Breezebrowser Main View Screen Capture.

The Breezebrowser Main View Screen Capture

Above is the BreezeBrowser Main View screen capture that actually represents both of today’s images. Note that the illuminated red square on the cheek of the right hand bird that shows the active sensor that I had selected manually. That sensor was of course active at the moment of exposure. In BreezeBrowser you need to check “Show Focus Points” under View to activate this feature. To see the focus points in DPP V.3-point whatever check “AF Point” under View or hit Alt L. To learn how and why I use DPP (Canon Digital Photo Professional) to convert my RAW files, see the info on our DPP RAW Conversion Guide here. The DPP 4.0 RAW Conversion Guide that I am working on with Arash Hazeghi is nearing completion.

Note the perfect histogram with the small amount of WHITEs well into the rightmost histogram box and only a smattering of the dark tones clipped. Regular readers know that I use and depend on BreezeBrowser every day of the year. It allows me to sort my keepers and delete the rejects faster than any other Windows browsing program. We use it on the main computer in the home office to catalog our images file-drawer style. And the companion program, Downloader Pro allows me to download my images quickly and conveniently. It automatically adds my IPTC data and the shooting location. I have it set up to create a folder named by the Month/date/year. The Breezebrowser/Downloader Pro combo saves me many hours each week. To learn more or to purchase this great PC only program, click here. As far as the BreezeBrowser/Downloader Pro Combo goes, if you are using a Windows platform and are not using these two great programs you are at best, wasting your valuable time. Jennifer is loading Parallels onto my new Mac laptop today, that followed by a licensed copy of Windows 7 and then BreezeBrowser Pro and Downloader Pro. See BreezeBrowswer on a Mac for additional details.

There will be lots more coming soon on my switch to the top-of-the-line, super fast, Apple 15.4″ MacBook Pro Notebook Computer with Retina Display.

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The 2015 UK Puffins and Gannets IPT

June 29 through July 5, 2015: $5499: Limit 10 photographers/Openings 3. Two great leaders: Denise Ippolito and Arthur Morris.

Here are the plans for next year: take a red eye from the east coast of the US on 28 June arriving in Edinburgh, Scotland on the morning of Monday 29 June (or simply meet us then either at the Edinburgh Airport (EDI) or later in the day at our cottages if you are driving your own vehicle either from the UK or from somewhere in Europe. Stay 7 nights in two gorgeous modern country cottages.

There are 5 days of planned puffin/seabird trips—weather permitting, and 1 full day of gannet photography with 2 sessions on the boat.

The Details

All breakfasts, lunches and dinners are included. All 5 puffins boat lunches will need to be prepared in advance, taken with, and consumed at your leisure. I usually eat mine on the short boat trip from one island to the other. Also included is a restaurant lunch on the gannet boat day and a farewell fine dining thank you dinner. The cost of your National Heritage Trust is also included; that covers the twice a day landing fees.

Plan to fly home on the early morning of Monday 6 July or to continue your stay or travels.

We are planning this as double-occupancy only but we should be able to arrange for singles by renting a 3rd cottage. We would need to know well in advance, i.e., soon, and it would be pricey and would need to be paid with your non-refundable deposit of $2,000. The shared rooms are decent-sized, each with two roomy single beds and a private bathroom. There are two king rooms available for couples. The upscale country-side cottages are beyond lovely with large living areas and lots of open space for image sharing and Photoshop lessons.

Single Supplement Info

The single supplement is $1475. As we will be renting a third cottage the $1475 is due with your deposit and is also non-refundable.

If you are good to go please send your $2,000 deposit check now to save a spot. We do expect this workshop to sell out very quickly as we have already sold 2 slots even though the trip has not yet been formally announced till right now. Not to mention that everyone loves puffins. Please make your check out to “Arthur Morris” and send it to Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART, PO Box 7245, Indian Lake Estates, FL, 33855.

We do hope that you can join us.

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Typos

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Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART