A Magical Evening on All Counts

Your Call?

Which of today’s three magical evening images do you like best? Please leave a comment and let us know why you made your choice.

What’s Up?

Today is Wednesday 21 August 2024. I will be heading to St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, Long Island, NY at 7:30am for “two for the price of one” right hand surgery. In addition to carpal tunnel release surgery, Dr. Puopolo will do trigger finger release surgery on the right thumb. Unable to get back to sleep on Sunday evening due to the numbness, tingling, and pain in my right hand, I realized that my right thumb was clicking. When I awoke I experienced pain at the base of my right thumb. As a veteran of about six different trigger fingers, I recognized the symptoms quite clearly. I called Dr. Pop’s office on Monday morning and he called me back soon afterwards. That is when I signed up for the double-header surgery.

Thanks for all the good wishes at the last blog post. Again, there is no guarantee when it comes to any surgery, but I am of course hoping for relief. I do have 100& faith in Dr. Poupolo who has twice before operated on me with outstanding results.

A Magical Evening on All Counts

On Monday evening past, I traveled to Lawrence, Long Island, one of the Five Towns, with friend Anke Frohlich and friends/clients Geri Georg and Marc Wortsman. We had all been generously invited to dinner at Prime Bistro, a Kosher, French steakhouse by Izzy Flamm, my B&H affiliate manager. We have been friends now for 13 years. His friend and associate, the very delightful, very sincere, very spiritual, and very funny Stuart Honickman joined us. Needless to say, the wine, the appetizers, the entrées, and the conversation were all superb. A great time was had by all. Huge thanks to Izzy and to B&H for our wonderful meal.

The four photographers then headed to Nickerson Beach for a sunset photo session and I was thrilled that Izzy decided to join us as he had done in previous years. Just as we arrived at my AirBnB in Lido Beach, the skies opened up and it began to pour. I, however, was optimistic. The storm passed quickly so we made the 3-minute drive to the beach and headed out. There was a bright rainbow to the northeast. By the time we got out to the berm, an amazing yellow light lit up the eastern sky. The Atlantic Ocean was rendered in golden tones. As they had been doing every evening for a week, the large flocks of terns and skimmers repeatedly blasted off in all directions. Izzy was blown away. As we all were. It was a fabulous end to a great Monday afternoon.

Tuesday morning dawned cold and grey, a fitting end to my month long Nickerson Beach adventure. After a short morning session — we were all freezing, we headed back to the AirBnB to pack up. After dropping Geri off at LaGuardia, I dropped Anke off in Greenwich Village, and returned to Lido Beach for a nap. After I awoke, I packed up the car and drove to younger daughter Alissa’s home in Ronkonkoma where I will be staying for two weeks after the surgery.

This i-phone 15 image was created at about 7:45pm on the magical evening of 19 August 2024 at Nickerson Beach Park, Lido Beach, Long Island, NY. Image #1: Common Tern blast-off in front of the eastern sky

The Yellow Light

The yellow light to the east was both glorious and ethereal. Even had I removed the 2X TC and zoomed out to 70mm, I could not have gotten nearly wide enough with my versatile 70-200 f/2.8 II GM lens so I grabbed my I-Phone 15 from my new fanny pack (details soon) and went to work.

I got very lucky as the terns blasted off while I struggled a bit with my I-phone. I needed to crop a sliver off the top of this image as I had my thumb in front of the lens :-(.

This image was also created on the magical evening of 19 August 2024 at Nickerson Beach Park, Lido Beach, Long Island, NY. Standing at full height in six inches of water, I used the handheld Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS II lens with the Sony FE 2x teleconverter (at 198mm), and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless Digital Camera.. The exposure was determined via Zebras with Exposure Compensation on the Thumb Dial. Multi metering +1.7 stops. AUTO ISO set ISO 3200: 1/125 sec. at f/5.6 (wide open) in Shutter Priority mode. AWB at 7:48:46pm on a stormy evening. Tracking: Expand Spot AF/C with Bird-Eye/Face Detection performed perfectly. Click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #2: Great Black-backed Gull standing on berm after storm

TLC

The image optimization for Image #2 required some tender loving care as far as getting the color right. While I was able to get the surface of the ocean right and the wave washed sand right, the wave and the whites on the bird had a large CYAN/BLUE cast. I corrected that by going Select > Color Range, clicking on the problematic whites, adjusting the Fuzziness and Range sliders, and then doing a Hue Saturation adjustment to the layer; I decreased the BLUE and the CYAN saturation and made both colors lighter. All as detailed in the Digital Basics II PDF.

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 technique 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.

This image was also created on the magical evening of 19 August 2024 at Nickerson Beach Park, Lido Beach, Long Island, NY. Standing at full height, I used the handheld Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS II lens with the Sony FE 2x teleconverter (at 196mm), and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless Digital Camera.. The exposure was determined via Zebras with Exposure Compensation on the Thumb Dial. Multi metering +2.0 stops. AUTO ISO set ISO 3200: 1/13 sec. at f/5.6 (wide open) in Shutter Priority mode. AWB at 8:01:31pm on a stormy evening. Tracking: Expand Spot AF/C with Bird-Eye/Face Detection performed perfectly. Click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #3: Tern/skimmer Blur

Looking Southwest

Good nature photographers keep their eyes moving constantly, especially in rapidly changing situations. Looking to the southwest, I noted a decent tern/skimmer blastoff and was able to include some pan-blurred beach vegetation by zooming out. As first pointed out in the original The Art of Bird Photography, adding green to an image is usually a good idea.

A Guide to Pleasing Blurs

Learn everything there is to know about creating pleasingly blurred images in A Guide to Pleasing Blurs by Denise Ippolito and yours truly. This 20,585 word, 271 page PDF is illustrated with 144 different, exciting, and artistic images. The guide covers the basics of creating pleasingly blurred images, the factors that influence the degree of blurring, the use of filters in creating pleasing blurs, and a great variety of both in-the-field and Photoshop techniques that can be used to create pleasingly blurred images.

Artie and Denise teach you many different ways to move your lens during the exposure to create a variety of pleasingly blurred images of flowers and trees and water and landscapes. They will teach you to recognize situations where subject movement can be used to your advantage to create pan blurs, wind blurs, and moving water blurs. They will teach you to create zoom-blurs both in the field and during post-processing. Artie shares the techniques that he has used and developed for making blurred images of flocks of geese in flight at his beloved Bosque del Apache and Denise shares her flower blur magic as well as a variety of creative Photoshop techniques that she has developed.

With the advent of digital capture creating blurred images has become a great and inexpensive way to go out with your camera and have fun. And while many folks think that making successful blurred images is the result of being a sloppy photographer, nothing could be further from the truth. In “A Guide to Pleasing Blurs” Artie and Denise will help you to unleash your creative self.

Typos

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