The Un-banded American Oystercatcher Family of Four: A 10,000 to 1 Against Head Angle /Juxtapositional Miracle

What’s Up?

Despite the challenging conditions, photography has been great on the Nickerson Beach (extended) #1 IPT. Judy headed back to PA yesterday and Monte begins his drive back to Indiana tomorrow.

Momma Said, Life was Like a Box of Chocolates

My favorite line in the clip above is the woman saying, “My feet hurt.” How great is Tom Hanks?

A Story

A little old Jewish man goes to temple. He speaks to God, “You know my wife and I have been good Jews for many years. We keep Kosher and go to shul every Sabbath. Please, please, let us win the lottery.‘ Next week, the same thing. Week after week, month after month, the same thing. After almost a year he is in the temple. He speaks to God again, “You know my wife and I have been good Jews for many years. We keep Kosher and go to shul every Sabbath. Please, please, let us win the lottery.‘ There is a deafening clap of thunder and lightning strikes his place of worship. A gruff voice booms with a Yiddish accent, “So at least by a ticket …”

So, what does this have to do with digital photography? It does not cost one penny to press the shutter button. Be aggressive. See the possible shot, determine the shutter speed and the ISO, acquire focus, and press and hold the shutter button. It’s that “Life was like a box of chocolates‘ thing all over again: “You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Remember, you can’t win it if you ain’t in it. Take risks. Press the button!

Photo Mechanic screen capture for the American Oystercatcher — the un-banded family of four image

Photo Mechanic Screen Capture

On a warm, humid, somewhat foggy morning, the front element of my 600mm f/4 lens had fogged over (despite that fact that it had not been in an air conditioned location all night). I could not clear, it so I kept on shooting. Being sure to expose to the right as always, the images looked beyond washed out and boring.

If you saw this raw file on your laptop would you keep it or delete it?

This image was created on 30 July 2024 on the Nickerson Beach (extended) IPT. Seated on wet sand (at best) I used the flattened Robus RC-5570 Vantage Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens with the Sony FE 1.4x Teleconverter, and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless Digital Camera.. ISO 1600. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the rear wheel: 1/1000 second at f/5.6 (wide open) in Manual mode. RawDigger showed that the exposure was perfect. AWB at 6:41:40am on sunny morning with just too much moisture in the air. Tracking: Zone/AF-C with Bird-Eye/Face Detection performed amazingly well. Click on the image to enjoy the high-res version. American Oystercatcher — the un-banded family of four

A 10,000 to 1 Against Head Angle /Juxtapositional Miracle

Though the image looked completely washed out, the image design thrilled me. Getting two perfect head angles is difficult enough — four is too much to even dream of. And you could not paint the juxtaposition of the four birds any better. And since I knew that I could improve the color and contrast, this was a 100 percent keeper for me.

I thought that I would need to use more Dehaze than usual to bring this one to life, but simply setting the White Point and the Black Point as I always do as the first step in the raw conversion was all that was needed to improve the color and contrast. I cropped from below and from the right, added canvas in front of the birds, and worked hard to clean up the wet, ratty looking head of the closest bird, one of the two juveniles.

If you would be lost trying to optimize foggy looking images, check out the two offerings immediately below.

The un-banded family of four has given us many, many hours of enjoyment as they are absolutely tame and feed along the surf line in the same spot every morning. On Thursday, I was sitting in the water to photograph them and when I big wave came along, I needed to lift my rig with one hand to avoid having it get inundated by saltwater.

The BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II). You can order your copy from the BAA Online Store here, by sending a PayPal for $40 here, or by calling Jim or Jennifer weekdays at 863-692-0906 with your credit card in hand. Be sure to specify Digital Basics II.

The BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II)

The techniques mentioned above and tons more great Photoshop tips and techniques — along with my complete digital workflow, Digital Eye Doctor Techniques, and all my personalized Keyboard Shortcuts — are covered in detail in the BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II), an instructional PDF that is sent via e-mail. Note: folks working on a PC and/or those who do not want to miss anything Photoshop may wish to purchase the original Digital Basics along with DB II while saving $15 by clicking here to buy the DB Bundle.

Please note: the Divide and Conquer technique was inadvertently omitted from DB II. It is detailed in a free excerpt in the blog post here.

Folks who learn well by following along rather than by reading can check out the complete collection of MP 4 Photoshop Tutorial Videos by clicking here. Note: most of the videos are now priced at an amazingly low $5.00 each.

You can learn how and why I converted all of my Canon digital RAW files in DPP 4 in the DPP 4 RAW Conversion Guide here. More recently, I became proficient at converting my Nikon RAW (NEF) files in Adobe Camera Raw. About three years ago I began converting my Nikon and Sony RAW files in Capture One and did that for two years. You can learn more about Capture One in the Capture One Pro 12 Simplified MP4 Video here. The next step would be to get a copy of Arash Hazeghi’s “The Nikon Photographers’ Guide to Phase One Capture One Pro e-Guide” in the blog post here. Today, I convert my Sony raw files in Photoshop with Adobe Camera Raw.

You can learn advanced Quick Masking and advanced Layer Masking techniques in APTATS I & II. You can save $15 by purchasing the pair.

The Digital Basics III Video Series

The Digital Basics III Video Series

I realized about a year ago that my digital workflow had changed significantly and was toying with the idea of writing a Digital Basics III. More recently, I learned and begun working with two great new Photoshop Tools, the Remove Tool and the Luminance Targeted Adjustment Tool. The former is like a smarter Spot Healing Brush Tool on steroids and the latter is a step up from the fabulous Color Mixer Tool. During that same time frame, I came up with a new and improved 2-step noise reduction technique. I still use Divide and Conquer, Quick Masks, Layer Masks, an expanded array of personalized keyboard shortcuts, and tons of other stuff from both versions of Digital Basics.

As soon as I realized that I did not want to take on another large writing project, I realized that by creating a series of videos I could much more easily share all the details of my current digital workflow and much more easily incorporate additional new tips, techniques, and tools as I went. And so, The Digital Basics III Video Series was born.

You can order your copy of the Digital Basics III Video series here. The five videos with three images optimizations in each will be most valuable for folks using the latest version of Photoshop (2024) or Lightroom along with Topaz DeNoise AI and Topaz Sharpen AI.

Typos

With all blog posts, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors.