Official Photography Thread

[swampfrog]

Katy's Original // Gimp plugins G'MIC (1.6.0.4) + Tone Enhancer (self-authored):

[ATTACH]5615[/ATTACH]

Skin color looks off -- too orange maybe?

[swampfrog]

Thanks, that photo is unedited, by the way. KatyLied will surely mock my "Nikon colors."

Technically, you just let the camera edit it. A camera is just like any other software where you just push the "apply default settings button" for an image. You can alter the defaults in the camera. There is some blue cast to the whole picture, which is fine given the setting, but could be removed from the goose. Also the noise in the darker blues is noticeable. It also suffers from a minor amount of posterization in the water (where the change from light to dark tones is a sudden instead of a gradual transition).

[swampfrog]

Technically, you just let the camera edit it. A camera is just like any other software where you just push the "apply default settings button" for an image. You can alter the defaults in the camera. There is some blue cast to the whole picture, which is fine given the setting, but could be removed from the goose. Also the noise in the darker blues is noticeable. It also suffers from a minor amount of posterization in the water (where the change from light to dark tones is a sudden instead of a gradual transition).

Couldn't help but take a stab at it

jAIiVwO-Edit.jpg

[Art Vandelay]

A quick little primer on how to improve photo compostion (something Swampfrog already does an incredible job at).

[swampfrog]

Another one from a local pond. "Preach it Brother Mallard"

[Katy Lied]

"Preach it Brother Mallard"

Holy crap. Do you shoot locally, as in Utah? I should tag along.

[swampfrog]

Holy crap. Do you shoot locally, as in Utah? I should tag along.

Camas, WA. Across the Columbia River from Portland, OR. Not far from ClackamasCoug. This was at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens where locals feed the waterfowl so they are quite tame. I love the look of water frozen in motion, so waterfowl is a favorite subject. This looks like a tough capture to get, but pretty much all ducks/geese seem to exhibit this same behavior (I'm definitely no expert). When you observe them ducking their heads under the water and splashing water on their backs, it will shortly be followed by this "standing" wing flap usually 3-4 flaps back and forth. Once you see the ducking and splashing get focused on the head and as soon as they start the behavior by rising up start clicking, or just make sure the camera is in multishot mode and hold the shutter down. You will want to be in continuous focus mode and shoot at least 1/320 depending on how much "wing blur" you want, this was 1/500. I think this was a sequence of 10 - 12 shots, this one being my favorite. Another with the wings fully back came in 2nd.

After watching Art's youtube video, and looking at the crop I used, I decided it needs more space on the bottom, don't know if I cropped any off the bottom though.

[swampfrog]

Added some "canvas" to the bottom of the mallard shot. Here's another one from the same day:

[wuapinmon]

[Katy Lied]

nice photo wuap

[swampfrog]

Always nice to see the little ones up close. Was it injured? Anyone know the ID of the bird? Not one I'm familiar with.

[wuapinmon]

Always nice to see the little ones up close. Was it injured? Anyone know the ID of the bird? Not one I'm familiar with.

It's a brown-headed nuthatch. We caught it in mist nets, but it's not a target species, so we can only photograph it, make sure it's uninjured, and then release it. Here's a brown thrasher in hand. Check out the claws on this one:

[wuapinmon]

Also, I was messing around trying to shoot a red-tailed hawk through my binoculars when it swooped off its perch right towards us. I got this:

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Always nice to see the little ones up close. Was it injured? Anyone know the ID of the bird? Not one I'm familiar with.

Brown-headed nuthatch http://www.audubon.org/field-guide/b...eaded-nuthatch

Edit. Looks like I'm too late, so I'll post some pictures from last week.

Road runner.jpg
Greater roadrunner

American Bittern.jpg
American bittern's are pretty rare in our part of the swamps. Always a great find and this guy gave me a great angle.

[swampfrog]

American bittern's are pretty rare in our part of the swamps. Always a great find and this guy gave me a great angle.

I'm still trying to catch a bittern out in the open, even better would be in flight. There's quite a few of them in the wildlife refuges around here, but they pretty much stay in the brush. This one was walking along the water's edge for a while.

16170393888_8d306c412a_o.jpg