some odds an ends

Harryb

Hi you'll,

Just a few pics from my recent outtings.

the snowy egrets have returned in force





the Green Herons are back too


the morehens are still raising their chicks


The raptors are frequent visitors

Rohirrim

Nice Shots Harry. I like the action in the second one, but that reflection in the first one is very nice!

jwear

the only thing you be missing is a NH Ben and I can help with that you know nice set of shots Harry

ginger_55

Nice shots, Harry. You are probably getting our Snowys. Somebody took just about all our birds the other day. Left me w small things called butterflys.

I like the Osprey best, and I hate those birds, but I like that capture.

g

bfjr

Very good set Harry
I really like the 2nd to the Last are all my favs in this set
Your work always makes me want to run out and start shootin, thanks always for the inspiration

Harryb

Rohirrim wrote:

Nice Shots Harry. I like the action in the second one, but that reflection in the first one is very nice!

Thanks Steve.

Harryb

jwear wrote:

the only thing you be missing is a NH Ben and I can help with that you know nice set of shots Harry

Thanks Jeff. I could have thrown in a NH shot or two but they are getting to ve a bit common.

ehughes

Great stuff Harry, I really like the first one. I'm a sucker for a good reflection..

Ed

Harryb

ginger_55 wrote:

Nice shots, Harry. You are probably getting our Snowys. Somebody took just about all our birds the other day. Left me w small things called butterflys.

I like the Osprey best, and I hate those birds, but I like that capture.

g

Hey Ginger,

Sorry about your birds but butterflys are fun too. The good things about the birds is that they will return in a few months.

Harryb

bfjr wrote:

Very good set Harry
I really like the 2nd to the Last are all my favs in this set
Your work always makes me want to run out and start shootin, thanks always for the inspiration

Thaks you Ben. usually my photography makes people buy etch-a-sketch kits.

Osprey Whisperer

Nice bunch of snaps you have there , Harry.

BMP

Harryb

ehughes wrote:

Great stuff Harry, I really like the first one. I'm a sucker for a good reflection..

Ed

Thanks Ed. I love reflection shots too.

Harryb

Bird Man Photographer wrote:

Nice bunch of snaps you have there , Harry.

BMP

Thanks Mike.

rutt

These are are all great birds, I wish I could do 1/2 as well.



and



both suffer from one of my chronic problems, aiming high. I'd really like the first to have more space to breathe on the bottom and to see more of legs and feet in the second. This:



also has the aiming high problem, but I think you can easily fix by cropping a little off the top for better balance.



has better shadow detail than the ducks I commented on last week; did you try my (actually Dan Margulis') custom separation trick? If you did and corrected in CMYK, then I think you ended up with a little too much ink in the blacks. If not, maybe just a touch of shadow/highlight?

I'd like to see this same trick applied to:



to reveal more feather detail in the shadows.

This one:



seems just about perfect. I love the way these birds display (or whatever that is called.) It's as if they are possessed by some powerful ancient dance spirit.

jeff lapoint

Stunning as per yur usual! Especially like the 2nd to last.

Harryb

rutt wrote:

These are are all great birds, I wish I could do 1/2 as well.



and



both suffer from one of my chronic problems, aiming high. I'd really like the first to have more space to breathe on the bottom and to see more of legs and feet in the second. This:

The second one is one of the drawbacks of too much reach. I wasn't going to get the feet in on this one so I had to crop him at some point and if i had gone a bit further down on the legs it would have looked unbalanced w/o the feet.

also has the aiming high problem, but I think you can easily fix by cropping a little off the top for better balance.

All my shots are cropped for 8X10 printing. The snowy shot above was composed to have the green growth coming out of the left hand corner and leading down to the egret.

has better shadow detail than the ducks I commented on last week; did you try my (actually Dan Margulis') custom separation trick? If you did and corrected in CMYK, then I think you ended up with a little too much ink in the blacks. If not, maybe just a touch of shadow/highlight?

Nope didn't try it but I'm about to order Dan's new book. If I applied shadow/highlight (in my workflow Nikon's D-light) it would have lightened the parent morehen too much. If I had wanted to spend more time on the shot I would have made the chick a separate layer and applied shadow/highlight to it. Unfortunately I shoot around 3000 shots a week so all my post work is minimal unless a shot is really special.

I'd like to see this same trick applied to:



to reveal more feather detail in the shadows.

Me too. Unfortunately this is a shot I should have passe don but I'm a sucker for raptors. He was terribly backlit and even after blowing out the sky just about completely I couldn't get a lot of detail out. I brought out more in my post work but if I had gone more aggressive the noise level would have shot way up necessitating NR which would have killed a lot of the detail i was trying to bring out.

This one:



seems just about perfect. I love the way these birds display (or whatever that is called.) It's as if they are possessed by some powerful ancient dance spirit.

That shot shows why I love shooting snowy egrets. Out of all the birds I shoot they have the most interesting poses and actions. They are always a lot of fun to shoot.

Harryb

jeff lapoint wrote:

Stunning as per yur usual! Especially like the 2nd to last.

Thanks Jeff.

rutt

Harryb wrote:

Nope didn't try it but I'm about to order Dan's new book.

Dan's new book is a best seller, but Professional Photoshop is the prerequisite, at least the first 6 chapters. Dan is really surprisesd at how well the new book is selling given that it doesn't really cover the basics as he sees them (different from anyone else.)

harryb wrote:

If I applied shadow/highlight (in my workflow Nikon's D-light) it would have lightened the parent morehen too much.

PS shadow/highlight has a separate tonal range parameter for both the shadow and highlight corrections. You can use this to limit the correcton to only the very darkest shadows or lightest shadows.

harryb wrote:

Me too. Unfortunately this is a shot I should have passe don but I'm a sucker for raptors. He was terribly backlit and even after blowing out the sky just about completely I couldn't get a lot of detail out. I brought out more in my post work but if I had gone more aggressive the noise level would have shot way up necessitating NR which would have killed a lot of the detail i was trying to bring out.

I worked on the image you posted and I think you could restore a lot of shadow detail. I almost was able to, but I think I needed the original to start with instead of a low res jpeg that had already been worked on. The idea of Dan's that often works for holding detail in very deep shadows is to make a custom CMYK separation with a very low black ink limit. You can then steepen the curve and sharpen the black channel mercilessly. The result will have much too much ink in the black areas (because the C, M, and Y channels will be very high to replace the black which you have now duplicated when you steepened the curve in the black channel.) The final step is to use Selective Color to reduce the amount of CMY in the blacks. The result is often spectacular, and it doesn't introduce any noise.

jwear

worked on the image you posted and I think you could restore a lot of shadow detail. I almost was able to, but I think I needed the original to start with instead of a low res jpeg that had already been worked on. The idea of Dan's that often works for holding detail in very deep shadows is to make a custom CMYK separation with a very low black ink limit. You can then steepen the curve and sharpen the black channel mercilessly. The result will have much too much ink in the black areas (because the C, M, and Y channels will be very high to replace the black which you have now duplicated when you steepened the curve in the black channel.) The final step is to use Selective Color. The result is often spectacular, and it doesn't introduce any noise. Rutt does any of this come english

Harryb

rutt wrote:

Dan's new book is a best seller, but Professional Photoshop is the prerequisite, at least the first 6 chapters. Dan is really surprisesd at how well the new book is selling given that it doesn't really cover the basics as he sees them (different from anyone else.)

PS shadow/highlight has a separate tonal range parameter for both the shadow and highlight corrections. You can use this to limit the correcton to only the very darkest shadows or lightest shadows.

I am aware of the tonal range parameter. I have used PS's Shadow/Highlight tool and I have always been highly unimpressed with its results. The end product always has that "Photoshopped" look. I have had good results with it on landscape and city shots but rarely have I been happy with it on wildlife shots. I have found the D-Lighting tool in Nikon Capture to produce better results.

I worked on the image you posted and I think you could restore a lot of shadow detail. I almost was able to, but I think I needed the original to start with instead of a low res jpeg that had already been worked on. The idea of Dan's that often works for holding detail in very deep shadows is to make a custom CMYK separation with a very low black ink limit. You can then steepen the curve and sharpen the black channel mercilessly. The result will have much too much ink in the black areas (because the C, M, and Y channels will be very high to replace the black which you have now duplicated when you steepened the curve in the black channel.) The final step is to use Selective Color to reduce the amount of CMY in the blacks. The result is often spectacular, and it doesn't introduce any noise.

I have tried CMYK separation and working in LAB on wildlife shots and I have not been pleased with the results. The images have not looked natural or when the results were better the improvement was marginal and not worth the extra post processing time required.

I wish I could use blended exposures on wildlife shots but unlike landscape shots thats not practical for obvious reasons. Most of my shots could be improved in some area with some additional post processing. The problem that comes in is the time factor. I would love to use layers more but the process of painting in the effect I want to use on the selected area becomes very time intensive (to do it correctly).