Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART

Stuff

Lee Sommie and I headed to the cliffs on Thursday morning and once again were amazed by the dearth of Pacific race Brown Pelicans. For the second day in a row, no pelicans came in. We headed down the hill to do some cormorants and at 8:20pm we headed to the airport, checked in and got rid of our bags (hopefully temporarily), returned the rental car to National, and took the bus back to Terminal 1. Lee and I are on the same flight to Orlando as I type. Jim should be picking me up a bit after 7pm.

I am far behind on e-mails though I have pretty much kept up with the Used Gear Page stuff. If you sent an e-mail that I missed, re-sending it now would be helpful. I shipped the 600 II from San Diego on Tuesday; the rest of the Canon cameras and lenses will arrive at ILE next Tuesday and we will do our best to ship it the next day if you paid by credit card or if your check has cleared.

Thanks to the folks who commented on the Scratching Perfection? blog post here.

On Friday and the coming weekend, I will, in addition to catching up on e-mails, be working on the Gatorland and DeSoto IPT and Master Class announcements as well. There are two openings on the spoonbill IPT. Click here for complete info. If anyone would like to join me shooting spoonbills for 1 1/2 days, February 19 (full day) and February 20 (morning session only), please get in touch via e-mail.

The Streak

Today makes one hundred eighty-six days in a row with a new educational blog post! This one took about 30 minutes to prepare. With all of my upcoming free time (or not …), the plan right now is to break the current record streak of 480 … Good health and good internet connections and my continuing insanity willing.

Booking.Com

Booking.Com came through for me twice again recently with both the DeSoto Fall IPT and next July’s UK Puffins, Gannets, and Bempton Pre-trip room reservations. And all the rates were great. If you’d like to give Booking.Com a shot, click here and you will earn a $25 reward. Thanks to the many who have already tried and used this great service.

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. Those questions might deal with systems, camera bodies, accessories, and/or lens choices and decisions.

This image was created on the last morning of the 2nd San Diego IPT with the hand held Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR lens (at 500mm) and the mega mega-pixel Nikon D850 DSLR.. ISO 400. Matrix metering : 1/4000 sec. at f/6.3 in Manual mode was about zero EC as framed. AWB at 8:22am in early morning light. Group (grp)/Shutter Button AF. Click on the image to enjoy a larger version. Western Gull, adult landing in front of breaking wave

Splash Landing

As mentioned previously on the blog, the morning of Wednesday, January 31, was inexplicably dismal for Pacific race Brown Pelicans. Not a single pelican landed at the traditional location at La Jolla. There were none on the cliffs when we arrived,two young birds flew by but did not land, and no others approached. It was a first for me in more than 25 years of visits. So we folded our tent early and headed down to the lower cliffs to check out the full action. We did well with Westerns, Ring-billed, and the gorgeous Heerman’s. It was good to see some of the dark, first-winter Heerman’s after the previous year’s catastrophic breeding season. In 2017 we did not see a single youngster of this species. We finished up doing head portraits of both Brandt’s and Double-crested Cormorants at a third cliff-side location.

The ACR RAW Conversion for today’s featured image

The ACR RAW Conversion for Today’s Featured Image

Though the rock the bird was landing on was sloped, I decided to rotate it 1.5 degrees just for the heck of it; it looked much better. But that left too little space above the bird and to the right. I added canvas using the expand with the Crop Tool method and ran John Haedo Content Aware Fill (Shift + Delete) after going Select > Modify > Expand: 10 pixels. As expected, that added a good deal of an extra wing to the top of the frame. I covered that with a Quick Mask that was lightened to match the surrounding tonality by pulling up the Curve on that layer (Command + M). Then I added a Regular Layer Mask and refined the Quick Mask. Perfect. Some of the background wave looked a bit lumpy so I put the whole image on a new layer (command + J), ran a 30 pixel Gaussian blur, added an Inverse (Black or Hide-all) Mask, and using a large, soft brush, painted in the effect where needed be sure to steer well clear of the bird.

Next I did some Eye Doctor by painting a Quick Mask of the eye that included a small area of surrounding feathers and applying a Contrast Mask (Unsharp Mask at 15/65/0). Next was Tim Grey Dodge and Burn to darken the pupil and lighten the iris. Last I put the whole image on a layer ran Image > Auto Contrast and reduced the opacity to 40%. Thanks as always to Denise Ippolito for teaching me to try Auto Contrast, Auto Tone, and Auto Color and then to reduce the opacity to taste. Next I saved my master file as a TIFF and created my 1200 wide JPEG (sharpened at 110/.3/0). After creating your JPEG be sure to click No when they ask if you want to save changes to the file … If you click Yes you will have replaced your full sized master file with a relatively tiny JPEG!

Apologies to the many …

I am sorry to have to say that I created this image with my new Nikon gear and that the chance of me getting it sharp with my comparable Canon gear were about one in a thousand. I used to suck really at landing and take-off images. If I ever learn to zoom the right way with the 200-500 I will be even more dangerous than I am now.

Many folks have openly voiced the fact that they were disappointed, sad, upset, inconvenienced, angry, and lots more by my switch to Nikon. One mentioned that the days of my loaning out $10,000 Canon lenses (for free) to folks on IPTs were over.” I agreed. One blog regular wrote that she was marking my blog post notices as spam because all that I did was advertise. Many have been bitching about too much emphasis on the Canon versus Nikon wars. Please understand that I have no interest in which system folks consider to be best. My stance here is that whether you use Canon or Nikon gear it is the photographer holding the gear that creates the image, not the gear. It is what is in your heart, your soul, and your brain that matters. As I have stated, all that I have done is switch to a system that I believe offers the best tools for me at this point in my life. Please do not take it personally. 🙂

As always here, I have simply been sharing what gear I use and what I was thinking when creating a given image, commenting on getting the right exposure, letting folks know why I chose to design or process an image as I did. And I will continue to do just that. Whether I use white lenses or Dark Side gear will never change the fact that my goal here to to educate. And yes, to advertise. As regular folks know I put in about 14 or more hours each week to make the blog fun and informative. Every blog post is crammed with advertising. Come on an IPT. Please remember to use my B&H and Amazon links. Join BPN. Purchase this or that guide. Buy or sell your Used Photo Gear. Had I not figured out way to monetize the blog it simply would have never continued to exist. And trust me, it took quite some time to figure that out.

Many have assumed that from now on the blog will be all-Nikon as it was all-Canon since its inception. Rest assured that nothing could be further from the truth. In the past, I had knowledge of only one system. Soon I will master the second major (at least in North America) camera system. I have many hundreds of Canon images that I will be sharing with you in future blog posts. And I will surely stay abreast of everything Canon while I work hard at learning to best use my new Nikon stuff. As I have stated here more than a few times over the past few days it is not all wine and roses with the Nikon system. Both camera bodies share some major flaws that might or might not be deal breakers for many. I will be sharing my thoughts in this area with you here soon.

Those wishing to unsubscribe can do so by clicking on the Subscriptions tab on the orange/yellow tool bar at the top of each blog post. And new folks wishing to subscribe can do so in the same manner. Those who are interested in becoming better photographers regardless of the system they us are invited to stay with us for what will hopefully be a long and continuing journey of learning. For you and for me.

ps: Folks who have been following and enjoying my transition tales will surely want to go back over the past ten or so posts and read all the comments and my responses as their is lots of meaty stuff there.

The BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II) will teach you an efficient Mac or PC/Photo Mechanic/Photoshop workflow that will make it easy for you to make your images better in Photoshop (rather than worse). That true whether you convert your images in DPP 4 or ACR. See the blog post here to learn lots more and to read a free excerpt. 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.

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

Your guessed it, everything mentioned above including making ACR conversions (and tons more) is covered in detail in the BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II), an instructional PDF that is sent via e-mail. Learn more and check out the free excerpt in the blog post here. While the new e-Guide reflects my Macbook Pro/Photo Mechanic/DPP 4/Photoshop workflow, folks using a PC and/or BreezeBrowser will also benefit greatly by studying the material on DB II. Do note that you will find the RGB Curves Adjustment Color Balancing tutorial only in the new e-guide. 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.

The two most recent and many of the older MP4 Photoshop Tutorial videos releases go hand and hand with the information in DB II):

• The Wingtip Repairs MP4 Video here.
• The MP4 Crow Cleanup Video 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.

You can learn how and why I and other discerning Canon shooters convert nearly all of their Canon digital RAW files in DPP 4 using Canon Digital Photo Professional in the DPP 4 RAW conversion Guide here. Yes, I still have many Canon images to work on. 🙂 And you can learn advanced Quick Masking and advanced Layer Masking techniques in APTATS I & II. You can save $15 by purchasing the pair. Folks can learn sophisticated sharpening and (NeatImage) Noise Reduction techniques in the The Professional Post Processing Guide by Arash Hazeghi and yours truly.

Help Support the Blog

Please help support my (stupendous) efforts here on the blog by remembering to click on the logo link above each time that you shop Amazon. That would be greatly appreciated. There is no problem using your Prime account; just click on the link and log into your Prime account. With love, artie

If In Doubt …

If in doubt about using the BAA B&H affiliate link correctly, you can always start your search by clicking here. Please note that the tracking is invisible. Web orders only. Please, however, remember to shoot me your receipt via e-mail.

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.

Facebook

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 :).

Stuff

The morning began as the worst pelican day ever but with thin high clouds and patience we wound up doing quite well as some really handsome birds flew in to the lower shelf, right where I had put the group. When it clouded over completely we headed to the Harbor Seals but after a few minutes the sun came out and ruined things. The group outvoted me so we headed to Santee Lakes for the afternoon; I had wanted to do more pelicans and cormorants and Santee was terrible the last time I visited but lo and behold, we had a great afternoon capped off by five tame Wood Ducks, four drakes and a hen.

There are two openings on the spoonbill IPT. Click here for complete info. If anyone would like to join me shooting spoonbills for 1 1/2 days, February 19 (full day) and February 20 (morning session only), please get in touch via e-mail.

Nikon Part Help Needed

If you can find me one of these in stock anywhere: Nikon BL-5 Battery Chamber Cover for MB-D12 Battery Pack, please contact me via e-mail immediately. US suppliers only please. 🙂

The Streak

Today makes one hundred eighty-four days in a row with a new educational blog post! This one took about an hour to prepare. With all of my upcoming free time (or not …), the plan right now is to break the current record streak of 480 … Good health and good internet connections and my continuing insanity willing.

New Listing

BIRDS AS ART Record Low Price!

Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM Lens (the “old five”)

IPT veteran John Johnson is offering a Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM lens in excellent condition for the BIRDS AS ART record-low price of $3549.00. The lens was recently cleaned and checked by Canon. The sale includes the rear lens cap, the lens trunk, the tough front lens cover, a forest green camo LensCoat and Hoodie (softfrontlens cover), and insured ground shipping via major courier to US addresses only. Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made.

Please contact John via e-mail by phone at 1-216-533-6148 (Eastern time).

The 500mm f/4 lenses have been the world’s most popular telephoto lenses for birds, nature, wildlife, and sports for many decades. I owned and used and loved my “old five” for many years. If you don’t have the cash for the 500 II and can handle the additional 1 1/2 pounds, then this is your best super-telephoto option. Most everyone can produce sharp images with this lens and a 1.4X TC. Folks with good to excellent sharpness techniques can do the same with a 2X TC. With the new 500 II selling for $8,999 you can save a neat $5299.00 by grabbing John’s lens now! artie

Booking.Com

Booking.Com came through for me twice again recently with both the DeSoto Fall IPT and next July’s UK Puffins, Gannets, and Bempton Pre-trip room reservations. And all the rates were great. If you’d like to give Booking.Com a shot, click here and you will earn a $25 reward. Thanks to the many who have already tried and used this great service.

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. Those questions might deal with systems, camera bodies, accessories, and/or lens choices and decisions.

This image was created on January 29 at La Jolla, CA with the hand held Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR lens (at 240mm) and the blazingly fast professional digital camera body, the Nikon D5 DSLR camera body with dual XQD slots). ISO 3200: 1/1600 sec. at f/5.6 in Manual mode. AWB at 9:03am in the shade of the nesting cliff. Center Group (grp)/Shutter Button AF. Click on the image to enjoy a larger version. Brandt’ Cormorant, incoming with nesting material

A Single Image That Explains Why I Switched from Canon to Nikon; No More Sharp on the Feet!

I tried for this image with Canon gear many 100s of times. I experimented with various AF custom Case settings. No matter what I did, the best I could do was to get images that were sharp on the incoming bird’s feet. With the birds flying right at you at about 40mph, Canon AF could simply not keep up. I never had a single sharp on the eye result. Patrick had one or two sharp with his Canon gear. With the 200-500 and either the 5D or the D-850, most of the images are sharp on the eye barring operator error.

How I Did It

I came up with this technique in short order. I hold the 200-500 lens with the zoom set at 250mm, instructing my brain on which direction to turn the barrel to zoom out to 200mm. I scan the ocean for incoming birds, especially those carrying nesting material. Now here is the totally amazing part. I acquire focus on the distant bird with the lens at 250mm. With Canon this would simply be pipe dreaming. With my Nikon stuff, the system acquires focus quickly even though the bird is tiny in the frame. And it locks focus and holds on like a starving bulldog on a bone. On sunny days the birds are in the sun when I first acquire focus. I stay at 250mm and track them as they get larger and larger in the frame. When they hit the shade I begin to fire and if they are coming right at me I zoom out at some point.

An ACR screen capture w/ all values at my default settings for the D-5

The Exposure and the Ramifications

Patrick and I have pretty much pre-determined the exposure for the incoming cormorants in the shade: 1/1600 sec. at f/5.6 for the dark birds will be a bit under for the birds. But, as you can see in the ACR histogram in the screen capture below, these values will not toast the breaking waves. Both the RAW conversion and the image optimization takes care of the too-dark dark tones.

An ACR screen capture w/ all values at my default settings for the D-5

The RAW Conversion in ACR

First I increased the Exposure by more than a stop. Then I set the WHITE and BLACK points in ACR and then as I always do backed off a bit on each. Next was -36 on the Highlights to bring some detail into the breaking waves and +33 and the Shadow slider to open up the dark underwings. Plus 10 with Clarity and +15 on Vibrance finished things off.

The Image Optimization

Next was a crop. But the underwings were still too dark without much detail. I selected the bird and applied my 40/40 Nik Color Efex Pro recipe to that Layer. That really brought the image to life. Last was a quick and dirty layer of NeatImage noise reduction with Y set to about 50%.

The BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II) will teach you an efficient Mac or PC/Photo Mechanic/Photoshop workflow that will make it easy for you to make your images better in Photoshop (rather than worse). That true whether you convert your images in DPP 4 or ACR. See the blog post here to learn lots more and to read a free excerpt. 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.

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

Your guessed it, everything mentioned above including making ACR conversions (and tons more) is covered in detail in the BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II), an instructional PDF that is sent via e-mail. Learn more and check out the free excerpt in the blog post here. While the new e-Guide reflects my Macbook Pro/Photo Mechanic/DPP 4/Photoshop workflow, folks using a PC and/or BreezeBrowser will also benefit greatly by studying the material on DB II. Do note that you will find the RGB Curves Adjustment Color Balancing tutorial only in the new e-guide. 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.

The two most recent and many of the older MP4 Photoshop Tutorial videos releases go hand and hand with the information in DB II):

• The Wingtip Repairs MP4 Video here.
• The MP4 Crow Cleanup Video 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.

You can learn how and why I and other discerning Canon shooters convert nearly all of their Canon digital RAW files in DPP 4 using Canon Digital Photo Professional in the DPP 4 RAW conversion Guide here. And you can learn advanced Quick Masking and advanced Layer Masking techniques in APTATS I & II. You can save $15 by purchasing the pair. Folks can learn sophisticated sharpening and (NeatImage) Noise Reduction techniques in the The Professional Post Processing Guide by Arash Hazeghi and yours truly.

Help Support the Blog

Please help support my (stupendous) efforts here on the blog by remembering to click on the logo link above each time that you shop Amazon. That would be greatly appreciated. There is no problem using your Prime account; just click on the link and log into your Prime account. With love, artie

If In Doubt …

If in doubt about using the BAA B&H affiliate link correctly, you can always start your search by clicking here. Please note that the tracking is invisible. Web orders only. Please, however, remember to shoot me your receipt via e-mail.

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.

Facebook

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 :).