23 Jul 14. While driving around the loop road heading to the eastern portion of Yellowstone National Park known as the Lamar Valley, we rounded a curve in the road to encounter a large number of vehicles lining both sides of the road and a group of photographers (film crew) all looking across the road with their cameras pointing to a specific location. We stopped, I got out to see what was causing the commotion, and was directed to a spot where a black bear was munching on its kill, a deer that had been taken down about three hours earlier. Putting my sharpest lens on the camera, I joined the group and took quite a few shots! Today's submission is typical of those shots and was taken with a lens with an effective 300mm focal length. If you look carefully you just may see the bear and its prey which is what I was seeing through the camera. I was shooting between all those other folks with the big glass that you see in the "film crew" image. It was kind of funny, but it was what I had and so that's what I used. To actually get the predator and large sheep images you need that big glass or just be lucky enough to cross paths with them unexpectedly, which can potentially become quite "interesting." Looking at some lens reviews last night for some of the bigger, but not break-the-bank expensive big glass, I ventured across a couple of videos on a technique I'd never heard of before, but one that apparently has been available on digital bodies, especially the Nikons, for over a decade, called back focus. It is a method for using a dedicated back of the camera button to do the focusing instead of the shutter release that offers many advantages. It saves battery power, makes for easier composition, and provides greater control of the camera. I set it up on all the bodies last night after watching the videos a couple of times and tried it out today. I'll now be using the technique in all my work. Some of you may find it worth while to check it out. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority;ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 5.6.
25 Jul 14. For today's close-up/macro image I'll depart from the normal discourse to discuss, at the request of several list members, what I'm using software-wise in my work. As most of you know I shy away from promoting specific products, because software, like hardware, is most always a matter of personal choice. But as I have many products from which to choose, and I play with all of them, I thought I'd make an exception and answer several individual questions as a general discussion. The image for today is not one in which I photographed the subject against my black velvet backdrop in the studio, but rather, a shot taken in the front yard of a red-orange calla lily shortly after a rainfall that I then took into the computer and cut from its background and under laid with a solid black layer. The part the software removed allowed the underlying black layer to show through. The making of a mask for a complex object has always been a somewhat trying, if not impossible, task, but new software is making it almost simple. Of all the masking programs I have, the latest from Topaz Labs, ReMask 4 ($35) is by far the best, and I highly recommend it to you if you want to do serious masking. The process I employed is demoed at the link above. Now, the base programs used by most can be quite expensive, and I'm sure you've heard the names of many including Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, onOne Suite, Elements, and Paint Shop Pro to name several, but Topaz makes one you've likely never heard of that is very capable called photoFXlab ($80). Either this, or Elements ($90), is a very good choice for starting and both have their advantages. All the Topaz programs have one VERY significant advantage; you purchase once with a lifetime (your) upgrade policy. NO other company offers this to you! Now, for a quick and VERY capable file viewer and image manipulation stand alone program, take a look at FastStone, which is freeware. I use it daily as the starting point for all my work. Another workhorse is Vuescan, ($40 for one year of upgrades; $80 for lifetime upgrades) a program for doing ALL your scanning needs. Finally, there is a printing program called Q-Image ($70) whose capabilities are so extensive that I don't have space to write about them but you can review them all here in this collection of training videos running over 338 minutes. You can also watch over 177 minutes of training videos for photoFXlab here. This combination of software is enough to get you doing almost everything I'm doing. Of course it will require effort on your part, but I'm happy to help anyone who asks for it. The total outlay for all of this is either $225 or $265 depending on your choice of Vuescan. In the big picture, this is peanuts for any serious work. The one thing I haven't included here is the collection of plug-ins I use, and these vary in price, but many, such as the Topaz collection of 14 programs, is always available as a bundle at a significant savings and the bundle often put on sale at either a 33% or 50%. I hope this helps those who have asked and perhaps some who didn't. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 5.6.
28 Jul 14. I used to enter into competitions for the fun of competing, but after several years of listening to folks who just couldn't resist making fools of themselves, I gave it up. My favorite two versions of such are the going on and on over the virtues of an obviously bad image when the commentator should have given the image some good solid helpful constructive criticism, and my all time favorite where the commentator, who has absolutely no knowledge of where the image was taken, or the conditions thereof, to tell the photographer how much better the image would be if it had been taken from a different angle, location, etc. This degree of arrogance, much like that held by members of certain photo organizations, is just too much. So I no longer participate in such ventures of frustration. There is of course lots of room for good solid helpful criticism of any image, and I truthfully appreciate any and all I receive from folks on these mailing lists, even though, sadly, there are but a few who offer their sage advice. The image for today is one of those in which a commentator would likely feel obliged to tell me how much better it would have been had I just moved a few feet to eliminate the branch that is covering a portion of the face of the middle cub, or that I could have edited the branch out of the photo. And while the latter is true but I elected not to, the former is not. Moving in either direction would have required me to walk over another photographer standing within inches of me and had I even elected to so do, my position, in relation to the cubs, would have been worse. Of course that possibility would never occur to those who feel like they know more about the location than did/does the photographer. These little guys were playing both hide and seek with the photographers as well as rough and tumble with each other. They put on a real show for perhaps 20 minutes, something the l o n g line of photographers had been waiting for quite a while to observe. We got to see these little guys about 90 minutes after watching the other adult with its kill. Only this time the group of photographers numbered perhaps 4x as many and the cost of the gear must have been approaching a quarter million dollars. I used the longest lens I had, but it isn't as sharp as I would desire, so what I'm sharing isn't razor sharp to begin with, and I've cut out perhaps 20% of the original to share. Normally I wouldn't offer something this soft, but seeing these three little guys was such a treat that I thought you might appreciate it anyway. This last trip we saw more bears than in all of our trips combined; of course our daughter made one trip there a couple of weeks ago and saw the same thing, a set of black bear triplets. This shot was taken with a 400mm lens on a camera body that effectively magnifies the lens by 50%, so it is what one would get with a 600mm lens on a film camera. Remember, this is a 20% section of the full frame, so it may give you an idea as to why serious nature photographers spend $25k or so per lens for the big glass, and also as to why I remain a hobbyist. Zoom in to 100% to appreciate the cubs. Nikon D300s; 80 - 400; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /6.3.
