What’s Up?
I spent the day at Gatorland with new friend (Downtown) Julie Brown, visiting FL from Indiana. We both had a great time. Julie learned a ton and I learned a few things as well. The most important thing that she learned was seeing the good situations. I will almost surely be offering the weekend sessions again next week. See Monday’s blog for details or shoot me an e-mail if you would like to join me. Tomorrow morning I am on my own for a busman’s holiday. Oops: I forgot to mention: the next week or two should be killer for breeding plumage Cattle Egrets as they were coming in in droves this morning.
Gear Questions and Advice
Too many folks attending BAA IPTs and dozens of folks whom I see in the field, and on BPN, are–out of ignorance–using the wrong gear, especially when it comes to tripods and more especially, tripod heads… Please know that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.
The Streak: 10!
Today’s blog post marks a totally insane, irrational, illogical, preposterous, absurd, completely ridiculous, unfathomable, silly, incomprehensible, what’s wrong with this guy?, makes-no-sense, 10 days in a row with a new educational blog post. As always–and folks have been doing a really great for a long time now–please remember to use our B&H links for your major gear purchases. For best results use one of our many product-specific links; after clicking on one of those you can continue shopping with all subsequent purchases invisibly tracked to BAA. Your doing so is always greatly appreciated. Please remember: web orders only. And please remember also that if you are shopping for items that we carry in the BAA Online Store (as noted in red at the close of this post below) we would of course appreciate your business.
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I created this image at Gatorland on 4 MAR on the Mini-IPT with the hand held Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens (at 271mm) and my favorite bird photography camera body, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1/3 stop: 1/8000 sec. at f/5 in Manual mode. AWB. Two AF points up from the center AF point/AI Servo/Expand/Shutter Button AF was active at the moment. Remarkably it held focus with the selected AF point on the base of the bird’s neck. Click on the image to see a larger version. This JPEG represents the converted TIFF. |
What Would You Do With the Big Foot Original?
That this image was created at at 9:57am on a mostly sunny morning led to many problems. I reduced the contrast during the RAW conversion in DPP 4 by by moving the Contrast slider to -1, the Highlight slider to -2, and the Shadow slider to +3. But there are still many problems. Here is your exercise for today:
1-Enlarge the image.
2-Leave a comment and include a list of the problems that one would face during the image optimization, in other words, a list of what’s wrong with this image. Take a close look especially at the far eye — the bird’s right eye, the shaded eye. After each problem, state what you would do in Photoshop to alleviate it.
3-Let us know how you would crop the image. And why.
Please Remember to use my Affiliate Links and to Visit the New BAA Online Store 🙂
To show your appreciation for my continuing efforts here, we ask, as always, that you get in the habit of using my B&H affiliate links on the right side of the blog for all of your photo and electronics purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store, especially the Mongoose M3.6 tripod head, Wimberley lens plates, Delkin flash cards and accessories, and LensCoat stuff.
As always, we sell only what I have used, have 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 please remember that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.
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, and for everything else in the new store, 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 those who will be visiting the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store as well.
Be sure to like and follow BAA on Facebook by clicking on the logo link upper right. Tanks a stack.
Typos
In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right :).
Please Remember to use my Affiliate Links and to Visit the New BAA Online Store 🙂
To show your appreciation for my continuing efforts here, we ask, as always, that you get in the habit of using my B&H affiliate links on the right side of the blog for all of your photo and electronics purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store, especially the Mongoose M3.6 tripod head, Wimberley lens plates, Delkin flash cards and accessories, and LensCoat stuff.
As always, we sell only what I have used, have 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 please remember that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.
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, and for everything else in the new store, 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 those who will be visiting the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store as well.
Be sure to like and follow BAA on Facebook by clicking on the logo link upper right. Tanks a stack.
Typos
In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right :).
I like the image as is, but I generally do not like objects that project into an image than do not have a connection to something else on the image. So, just for kicks, I took the foot out completely using cloning. I cropped it a bit placing the head of the bird in the cross hairs of the upper-right quadrant, but used the same aspect ratio (4X6). The resulting image begs the question “What is this bird doing?” It looks bewildered.
Probably not what you had in mind for refining the image, but I found it intriguing.
Artie: I would leave it as is, I think; I like it a lot.
I think this would look good also with a vertical crop from the base of the neck placing the head in the upper right third. Some of the whites on the neck are bright so would maybe add some local tonal contrast and/or detail extractor. The shadowed area around and including the right eye could possibly be brought up by adding overall brightnes and contrast, covering with a cover-all mask, then brushing in the brightness. Those are the only hammers in my small toolbox right now. Looking forward to your answers.
I am novice in PS.
Crop, hmm, I like to view an image at 1 to 1 r ratio to see the actual quality and work back from there to a pleasing composition that is tack sharp.
I would probably go to 8×10 format keeping the entire foot, forehead intersecting upper RH quadrant. Or possibly square it up by raising the bottom, removing the lower toe at the joint and closing in the LH side to keep the forehead in a rule of thirds position.
In PS use digital eye doctor guide lines. Rebuild eye in area of closing N. Membrane, repair / rebuild pupil clone stamp for majority of work in both.
Increase brightness in RH eye area that is in the shadow, using inverse brightness mask and brush in highliting.
Clean spot on neck plumage using either clone stamp or spot removal in content aware mode.
Clean up Bill
Come back the following day and glean for missed areas that require attention. Final evaluation.