BPN Sold. Stay In on a Stormy Morning? The Requested Eye Replacement and a Head Replacement as Well

Your Call?

Which of today’s three featured images is the strongest? Do let us know why you made your choice. I have a clear winner that I will share with you in the next post.

Bird Photographers.Net Sold

You can read the entire thread here. A nice discussion on nitpicking developed when I responded to Dan’s comment.

Bird Photographers.Net was conceived in my living room at Indian Lake Estates, FL sometime in mid 2007. James Shadle (AKA Captain Froggie) was there along with probably four or five other others, one recently deceased. I put up all the start-up money and have kept the site going till now. Jim Neiger was there as well. James, Jim, and I are still friends though we don’t see each other much anymore, we talk once in a while.

The first post was on 27 December 2007.

Scrolling through the first few weeks of posts from 17 years ago, I came across many familiar names. Many friends, some clients, too many now dead, many who went on to succeed professionally — too many in fact to name. Special thanks to Dan Cadieux for his BPN help in recent years, to all the members over the years, and especially, to all the moderators. Without them, no forum would ever amount to anything. I’d be remiss not to mention Avian Moderator Arash Hazeghi; he too has been a good friend for many years and we have done more than a few guides together. Both Dan and Arash developed into incredibly talented photographers as a result of the countless hours they spent on BPN.

I could not find my first post or my first comment, but I went on to write 32,593 of those. As many of you know, I have basically been an absentee owner for the most part for several years. As I am sure that the active folks have figured out by now that BPN changed owners very recently. When Group Builder offered to purchase BPN, I jumped at the chance. I believe the forum is in excellent hands now as they are a group of nice, competent folks.

I will still be around on occasion.

Much love, artie
Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART

PS: The baby Tricolored Heron was photographed at Gatorland in 2017 with a 105mm with the Canon 100-400 lens and the EOS 5D Mark IV.

Reply by Daniel Cadieux

Hey Artie, you gave it a great run! BPN has been such a great help now for 16 years (!!). I too have made many friends, and it was a pleasure to help you out behind the scenes for the last few years.

I still remember a critique I did on one of your images very, very early on (January 2008 or so). It was a Brown Pelican. There was a colored stripe in the background that I thought distracting so I gently but honestly pointed it out. I got teased quite a bit by some friends up here saying to me “Who are you to critique Arthur Morris’ image and point out what you think is a flaw lol”. Well, two months later I was asked if I was interested in becoming a moderator. Ha! Who had the last laugh eh!:)

Glad to see the site will keep on going….but it is the founders that you speak of that gave it its charm and “raison d’être”. Here’s to the next chapter…

Dan

What’s Up?

Today is Friday 27 September.

After traveling up the west coast of Florida yesterday afternoon and doing quite a bit of damage, Tropical Storm Helene — after becoming a category 3 hurricane, is tracking inland over the Southeastern USA this morning with life-threatening flash flooding, potential record river flooding, damaging winds and tornadoes.

Special prayers go out to Pat Fishburne of Ft. Myers, and to my accountant Chip, who evacuated his home in Clearwater on Wednesday evening.

We had some wind here at ILE and short bursts of heavy rain at times but I am as yet not aware of any local damage.

The forecast for this morning is for cloudy and dark with showers and a SW wind. Though not good, I will head down to the lakefront to see what’s up

Wherever you are I hope that you are well and safe.

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This image was created on 16 September 2024 down by the lake near my home at Indian Lake Estates, FL. Working from the driver’s seat of my SUV and resting the lens hood on the door frame, I used Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 600mm) and the ridiculously amazing Sony a9 III Mirrorless Camera. The exposure was determined using Zebra technology with ISO on the Thumb Dial. ISO 2000. 1/3200 second at f/6.3 (wide-open) in Manual Mode. AWB at 8:47:41am on a sunny morning. RawDigger showed the exposure to be dead-solid perfect. Tracking: Zone/AF-C with Bird Face/Eye Detection performed perfectly. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #1: Black Vulture ruffling after bath/eye replaced

The Eye Replacement

The only two folks — Pat Fishburne and David Peake, of New Zealand — who commented on the last blog post felt that the image would have been much better had the eye been replaced. Image #1 is for them.

Replacing the eye was much more difficult than I thought it would be. First I grabbed the eye from Image #1 in the last post here. As the eye was quite contorted as the bird raised its head and ruffled, that did not work at all. After struggling with it for 15 minutes, I simply deleted the layer and went back to the drawing board. I grabbed the eye from a frame that was created in the same second, 14 frames after the original. In that source frame, the nictitating membrane was only 1/4 closed. After placing and warping the replacement eye, I had to use the clone stamp to reconstruct the forward quarter of the iris. In addition, I darkened and enlarged the pupil. Working very large, I realized that I should have cleaned up the really distracting specular highlights on the head. So I did, and I was happy with the new version.

This image was created on 26 September 2024 down by the lake near my home at Indian Lake Estates, FL. Standing at the parking circle by the base of the pier, I used the hand held Sony FE 300mm f/2.8 GM OSS lens and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless Digital Camera). The exposure was determined via Zebra technology with ISO on the Thumb Dial. ISO 12500. 1/250 sec. at f/2.8 (wide open) in Manual mode. When evaluated in RawDigger, the raw file brightness was determined to be dead solid perfect (ho hum). AWB at 8:14:16am on a dark, stormy morning. Zone/AF-C with Bird Face/Eye detection enabled performed to perfection. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #2: Sandhill Crane adult doing nothing

A Dark and Stormy Morning

With the storm passing well to the west of ILE, Thursday dawned dark and dreary. The forecast called for strong SW winds. Had those materialized, they would have been the kiss of death for bird photography. But, when I got down to the lake, the wind was shifting east/southeast so all was not lost. With pretty much no light, grabbing the 300mm f/2.8 and working wide open without a teleconverter was the obvious choice. I was glad to find a pair of cranes feeding just below the hill to the north of the parking circle at the base of the pier. Note the relatively low shutter speed, the soft, lovely f/2.8 background bokeh, and the fact that the entire crane is more than sharp enough even though the image was created at the wide open aperture.

Though Image #2 is surely not a Wow! image, my point (again), is that you cannot make any photographs while sitting a storm out in your living room.

This image was also created on 26 September 2024 down by the lake near my home at Indian Lake Estates, FL. Standing on the “beach” left of the pier, I used the hand held Sony FE 300mm f/2.8 GM OSS lens and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless Digital Camera). The exposure was determined via Zebra technology with ISO on the Thumb Dial. ISO 3200. 1/2000 sec. at f/2.8 (wide open) in Manual mode. When evaluated in RawDigger, the raw file brightness was determined to be perfect (ho hum). AWB at 9:01:58am on a dark, stormy morning. Zone/AF-C with Bird Face/Eye detection enabled performed to perfection. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #3: Turkey Vulture adult in flight — incoming

Universal Advice for Better Flight Photography

Pan faster!

The square crop here was necessary because I did not pan fast enough to keep the bird back in the frame. Note that with a relatively slow flying bird on a windy morning, I skimped a bit on shutter speed to save a bit on ISO. (I now prefer and recommend 1/3200 or 1/4000 second for flight photography).

Head Replacement

In the original frame here, the bird’s head was turned away and its nictitating membrane covered the eye. I grabbed the head of the same bird from the previous frame. Replacing the head using a warped Quick Mask refined by a regular Layer Mask took perhaps two minutes.

The Torrential Rain Came

The water in the upper part of the frame (the lake) in Image #3 reflected the dark, indigo blue-black storm clouds above. It was quite obvious that it was going to rain very hard very soon. Rather than head home, I hung around for the brief but torrential rains. With the wind howling from the southeast, I was looking for some cranes just northwest of the roadways. In such conditions, you can angle your car perpendicular to the direction of the wind and photograph out of the driver’s side window with impunity. As you and your gear will be in the lee, neither will get wet. The goal: create some nice rain-streaked images by working at intermediate shutter speeds in the range of from 1/60 to 1/640 second. The length of the streaks will vary depending not only on the shutter speed but on how hard it is raining and the distance to the subject (among others). Darker backgrounds are better than light backgrounds else the rain streaks may not be visible.

The only problem was that the only pair of cranes I found were feeding on a lawn on the wrong side of the road.

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 more than 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 the five videos in Volume I by clicking here. The videos 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.