February 25th, 2018 Five Cheap, Small Group IPTs: Gatorland and DeSoto. I Go With One. Always.
Why Cheap?
Today, there is a proliferation of bird photography workshops , often by folks whose only qualification is owning a camera body. I am pretty well off financially but I would love to see folks join me, enjoy the best nature photography instruction that money can buy, and learn a ton in the process rather than waste their money.
Why Small Groups ?
I absolutely love working with only four or five photographers. We can get all of our work done gathered around a laptop in either a small meeting room or after lunch. And in the field, smaller groups are a pleasure.
Why Go With Only One?
I have always promised to go with one client and have done so on rare occasion. Why? Imagine that you commit to taking some time off from work and buying a plane ticket to attend a photography tour. Then two weeks before the trip, the leader writes and says, “I am cancelling the trip because I am not gonna make enough money.” That never worked for me and never will.
Note: on some really expensive trips where I need to lay out a large amount of money (say to lease a boat) I will stipulate far in advance something like “Limit 13; this trip needs nine photographer to run.” Can you say Galapagos?
IPT Stuff
All IPTs include an introductory briefing before the IPT begins so you know what to expect, frequent in-the-field instruction and guidance (priceless), image editing and small group Photoshop instruction during and after lunch. Breakfasts are on your own so that we can get in the field early.Lunches are on me. Dinners are on your own as well so that we can get to bed as the days in spring will be long.
Rides with the leader on a limited basis are available for $50/day.
Discount Info
Register for two of the IPTs below and apply a discount of $200 to your total. Register for three of the IPTs below and apply a discount of $300 to your total. Sign up for DeSoto #2 and Gatorland #3 (back to back) and apply a $300 discount to your total.
Registering for an IPT
To register for any of the IPTs above call Jim or Jen in the office at 863-692-0906 from Monday morning through Friday lunch with your credit card in hand to leave your $500 non-refundable deposit. Balances may not be paid by credit card so you will be asked to send a check for your balance along with the signed paperwork that you will find here.
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Great Egrets in breeding plumage are quite beautiful
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Gatorland IPT #1. Sunrise: 7:25am, Sunset: 7:40pm
3 1/2 DAYs: THURS 22 March through and including the morning of SUN 25 MAR. $1599. Limit 5 photographers.
(2 1/2 DAY option) FRI 23 March through and including the morning of SUN 25 MAR. $1199.
Must purchase Gatorland Photographers Pass. Click here for details. All early entry. Late stays Friday and Saturday. Thursday late-stay is under discussion. Gatorland IPT #1 is best for killer breeding plumage Great Egrets. With chicks. Also Wood Stork and Cattle Egret. Surprisingly, there are already more than a few Snowy Egrets and Tricolored Herons in breeding plumage! Learn to get the right exposure, flight photography techniques, my secret Gatorland spots, how to see the best situations (nobody is better at that than me), and how to make great images in extremely cluttered situations.
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Spring at DeSoto is often magical
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DeSoto IPT #1 Sunrise: 7:07 am. Sunset: 6:22pm.
3 DAYS: SUN 15 APR thru the morning session on WED 18 APR. Limit 5 photographers.
You must purchase a season Parking Pass in advance for early entry. Click here and scroll down for info. If you are not a local, the six month pass if fine. Best to order by mail. Join me to photograph a wide variety of birds of the shore including pelicans, gulls, terns, sandpipers, oystercatchers, heron, egrets, and night-herons. Many in full breeding plumage. Most are ridiculously tame. Osprey likely. Learn to get the right exposure, flight photography techniques, my secret DeSoto locations, how to see the best situations (nobody is better at that than me), and how to make great images in extremely cluttered situations. Enjoy some great sunrises and sunsets.
Which will offer better opportunities, Desoto #1 or DeSoto #2? I have no idea. Both have the potential to be great.
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Tame birds in breeding plumage are great fun.
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Gatorland IPT #2. Sunrise: 6:48am. Sunset: 7:58pm.
3 1/2 DAYs: THURS 26 APR through and including the morning of SUN 29 APR. $1599. Limit 5 photographers.
(2 1/2 DAY option) FRI 27 APR through and including the morning of SUN 29 APR. $1199.
Must purchase Gatorland Photographers Pass. Click here for details. All early entry. Late stays Friday and Saturday. Thursday late-stay is under discussion. Gatorland IPT #2 should have lots of chicks, and lots of birds in breeding plumage. We will get to photograph Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Tricolored Heron, and Wood Stork. The Cattle Egrets in full breeding plumage will be present in good numbers. Learn my Gatorland strategy, to get the right exposure, flight photography techniques, my secret Gatorland spots, how to see the best situations (nobody is better at that than me), and how to make great images in extremely cluttered situations.
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DeSoto is one of the very few bird photography hotspots that can be great any given day of the year/strong>
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DeSoto IPT #2. Sunrise: 6:41am. Sunset: 8:12pm.
SUN 13 MAY thru the morning session on WED 16 MAY: 3 1/2 DAYS: $1599.
You must purchase a season Parking Pass in advance for early entry. Click here and scroll down for info. If you are not a local, the six month pass if fine. Best to order by mail. Join me to photograph a wide variety of birds of the shore including pelicans, gulls, terns, sandpipers, oystercatchers, heron, egrets, and night-herons. Many in full breeding plumage. Most are ridiculously tame. Osprey likely. Learn to get the right exposure, flight photography techniques, my secret DeSoto locations, how to see the best situations (nobody is better at that than me), and how to make great images in extremely cluttered situations. Enjoy some great sunrises and sunsets.
Which will offer better opportunities, Desoto #1 or DeSoto #2? I have no idea. Both have the potential to be great.
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Large Tricolored Heron chicks (lower left) are to die for!
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Gatorland #3. Sunrise: 6:33am. Sunset: 8:10pm.
3 1/2 DAYs: THURS 17 MAY through and including the morning of SUN 20 MAY. $1599. Limit 5 photographers.
(2 1/2 DAY option) FRI 18 MAY through and including the morning of SUN 20 MAY. $1199.
Must purchase Gatorland Photographers Pass. Click here for details. All early entry. Late stays Friday and Saturday. Thursday late-stay is under discussion. Gatorland IPT #3 is best for medium sized chicks of the following species: Cattle Egret, Snowy Egret, and Tricolored Heron. Head portraits of handsome fledged Great Egrets are pretty much guaranteed. Learn to get the right exposure, flight photography techniques, my secret Gatorland spots, how to see the best situations (nobody is better at that than me), and how to make great images in extremely cluttered situations.
February 25th, 2018 Stuff
We were hoping that Saturday morning on the spoonbill boat would be as great as Friday morning had been. We actually did better in the pre-dawn with blurs but after a good start, the spoonbills disappointed. And the pelicans were not much better. We did very well with flight on both species of vultures while learning a lot about exposing the undersides shots correctly on a sunny blue sky day.
Very few folks took a stab at figuring out the focal length use for yesterday’s laughing Wood Stork image. There are lots of clues both in the EXIF and in my response to Adam’s comment. All are invited to re-visit and see if they can figure things out … Put on your thinking caps and click here to give it a much appreciated try.
The group enjoyed our Thank You dinner at the fabulous Thai Legacy Restaurant in Brandon on Saturday evening.
The Streak
Today makes two hundred nine days in a row with a new educational blog post! This one took about 50 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
Several folks on the Spoonbill IPTs used the Booking.Com link below and got great rates and saved a handsome $25.00 in the process. If you too would like to give Booking.Com a shot, click here and to earn a $25 reward on your first booking. 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.
Mongoose Warning
Right now the BAA Online Store has just two Mongoose M3.6.heads in stock. A price increase is coming. You can figure out the rest.
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This image was created on the second morning of the second spoonbill IPT, Saturday, February 24, 2018. I used the hand held Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR lens (at 500mm) and the and the blazingly fast professional digital camera body, the Nikon D5 DSLR camera body with dual XQD slots). ISO 1800. Matrix metering +1.0 stops: 1/30 sec. at f/5.6 in S mode — (Shutter priority, TV mode in Canon). K 7690 at 6:43am with clouds on the eastern horizon.
Group/Shutter Button AF. Click on the image to enjoy a larger version.
Double-crested Cormorant pre-dawn blur
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Necessity, the Mother of Invention
If you want to try to create sharp images in the pre-dawn, you will be working with ISOs in the 4,000 to 25,600 plus range. In general: not pretty. Learning to create pleasing blurs on the other hand allows you to work with much more manageable ISOs. Heck, on Saturday morning I wound up all the way down to ISO 400. As there is no ISO Safety Shift with Nikon, you need to use Auto ISO in these situations. You pick the shutter speed and set the EC and the camera sets the ISO. You must remember to turn off Auto ISO with Nikon else you will mess yourself up badly. This does not occur with Canon as long as you are properly using ISO Safety Shift (as detailed in our Canon camera body User’s guides.
Om most IPTs folks are thrilled to learn the techniques used to create pleasing per-dawn blurs, and are often amazed and thrilled with the results. For many, learning to create this one type of pleasing blurs is a really eye opener.
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The ACR Defaults for today’s featured image
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Plus One Stop Was a Huge Underexposure. Why?
So why did I have the EC set to only plus one stop when it is obvious with the grey sky — (see the ACR default screen capture above) that more than plus two stops would have been correct? Simple. It was a compromise. We had some orange in the sky and at +2 stops it was well over-exposed. We had lots of birds (like this one) flying against dull grey skies where +2 or even plus more would have been perfect. And we had birds behind us in the blue/pink purple where +2 would have been right on. So I went with +1 as a compromise because the birds were fling all over the place and coming from every which way. After I bit, I upped my compromise EC to +1 1/3 stops. In addition, as I would be creating silhouettes against a bright sky, that noise would not be much of a problem.
Note that even with my new gear I still have problems keeping the bird in the center of the frame when panning.
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My ACR settings for today’s featured image
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ACR
It has been great getting back to using ACR for my NEF files. One major change is that I usually start with the White slider. But with well underexposed images like today’s featured photo, I have found that it is best to first brighten things up by moving the Exposure slider to the right and then adjusting the White and Black sliders. Click on the screen capture above so that you can study the fine print to see where I went with the various sliders. Once I converted and cropped the image the only thing of note that I did was to tone down a bright orange patch on the bird’s gular region. We did that by painting a small Quick Mask of the area, going back into ACR (hit Filter > Camera RAW filter), and then going to the HSL tab and reducing the Luminance and Saturation of the Orange channel.
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Learn the secrets of creating contest winning images in our “A Guide to Pleasing Blurs.”
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A Guide to Pleasing Blurs
In our A Guide to Pleasing Blurs by Denise Ippolito and yours truly, we discuss just about every technique ever used mankind to create pleasingly blurred image. Ninety-nine point nine percent of pleasing blurs are not happy accidents. You can learn pretty much everything that there is to know about creating them in this instructive, well written, easy to follow guide.
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 :).
February 24th, 2018 Stuff
We did well on the Wood Storks on Thursday afternoon. We had the best morning of the year with the Roseate Spoonbills on the first day of the second Spoonbill IPT. The afternoon looked bleak with strong east winds and bright sun, but at about 4:30pm the wind turned around to the west as Captain James (Froggie) Shadle had predicted and we had a banner 90 minutes with flying and banking and landing pelicans. Sunset was a bit of a fizzle. It was early to bed after smoked salmon and goat cheese dinner in the room.
The Streak
Today makes two hundred eight 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
Several folks on the Spoonbill IPTs used the Booking.Com link below and got great rates and saved a handsome $25.00 in the process. If you too would like to give Booking.Com a shot, click here and to earn a $25 reward on your first booking. 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.
Mongoose Warning
Right now the BAA Online Store has just two Mongoose M3.6.heads in stock. A price increase is coming. You can figure out the rest.
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This image was created on the afternoon of Thursday, February 23, 2018 with my new Nikon gear. ISO 800. Matrix metering at zero: 1/2000 sec. at f/10. Sunny WB at 4:41pm on a clear afternoon.
Upper left of center d-9 Shutter Button AF.
Wood Stork yawning
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Sharpness and Focal Length
Just the sharpness based on the JPEG above and the unsharpened tight crop below. Then, using your knowledge of the new gear that I own and the EXIF data in the caption, guess the focal length. This bird was photographed on the free afternoon session at Brandon, FL.
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This is an unsharpened crop of today’s featured image
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The Unsharpened Crop
As above, judge the sharpness and take a guess at the focal length. You are invited to explain your answer. Just so you know, my opinion on the sharpness is that it is just fine, more than sharp enough to sell, and more than sharp enough to make me happy.
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 :).
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