Official Photography Thread

[PaloAltoCougar]

sf, my wife has threatened me with physical harm if I don't ask you for some of the specs for those contest entry shots, most importantly what lens(es) you were using. And if you can throw in ISO and typical shutter speed, so much the better. TIA!

[swampfrog]

sf, my wife has threatened me with physical harm if I don't ask you for some of the specs for those contest entry shots, most importantly what lens(es) you were using. And if you can throw in ISO and typical shutter speed, so much the better. TIA!

Click any image, it will take you to my website. On the left side (from a computer browser) is a details option which has all of that information and more.

[PaloAltoCougar]

Click any image, it will take you to my website. On the left side (from a computer browser) is a details option which has all of that information and more.

Excellent, thanks.

[swampfrog]

Excellent, thanks.

Also, there are a few more in the total gallery that you can scroll through. Those were all potentials until I narrowed it down to 6.

Warning: Some of those were taken with a rental 500mm or 600mm f/4 (often with a 1.4x teleconverter attached). Bird photography, especially of the smaller varieties, is one of the few subjects that require an investment for consistent quality, variety, and volume of production. There are days I consider selling everything I own in order to purchase one of those.

[Now who’s the dean?]

Some of these I've probably posted before, but here are my 6 entries in the Ridgefield NWR photo contest for this year. I decided to submit all 6 in the birds category.

Those are amazing.

[swampfrog]

Those are amazing.

Thanks.

[swampfrog]

The support is appreciated.

Here's last year's winners for all categories:

https://ridgefieldfriends.org/photoc...ntest-winners/

Linking the bird 1st and 2nd directly:

https://ridgefieldfriends.org/wp-con...olyn-33159.jpg

https://ridgefieldfriends.org/wp-con...glas-33273.jpg

From my perspective, the owl has the feet obscured, the background is distracting, and it's simply not a clean shot.

The kinglet has similar problems.

But those are photographer/artist viewpoints, not necessarily what birders or naturalists may be focused on.

The 2020 winners have been announced. As somewhat expected the judging leans towards naturalist/uniqueness rather than photographic artistic merit.

Winner (this is a tough shot to get, so it's understandable):



I also like this one, though the tones were highly modified to get this look:



The next 3 are average to good.







Other images and contest results here.

[Lost Student]

The 2020 winners have been announced. As somewhat expected the judging leans towards naturalist/uniqueness rather than photographic artistic merit.

...

Other images and contest results here.

You're the winner in my eyes, SF!

edit: although the mama bird picture is pretty cool, too.

[falafel]

They sure don't look very crisp. The subjects are good, but the photographs look fairly average, to my average eye. Maybe that's what you were talking about.

[swampfrog]

They sure don't look very crisp. The subjects are good, but the photographs look fairly average, to my average eye. Maybe that's what you were talking about.

Actual sharpness is hard to tell. I linked the jpg's and the scaling in the browser can affect visible sharpness. But generally yes, some of them appear soft to me also. I had noticed this before last year and scanning previous years, it doesn't appear that technical quality is a significant factor in the decision making process beyond a certain level. This year's images are better than last year, but still not what I would expect for a photography contest.

But also artistically, I don't like the heron in the green covered water--at all. Interesting pose, but otherwise, lots of distracting elements, needs to be rotated clockwise, and the bird is really quite soft. Overall lack of detail. Similar problem with the crane, background is too busy, especially the dead vegetation. The foot is too close to the bottom edge. Too much space on the left. I like the pose of the marsh wren, but the eye should be placed higher in the frame and again too much space on the left. Could adjust the background reeds a bit, the colors are nice, but too much contrast.

[Now who’s the dean?]

The eagle and little bird you shot beats all of those by 100

[Copelius]

Caught this somewhere around Duchesne Ridge on our last camping trip.

[swampfrog]

Anyone looking to get a great full frame, super high resolution camera should get in on this. Wish I had $1500, this is a $3700 camera being closed out.

https://www.cpricewatch.com/blog/202...and-new-at-bh/

[swampfrog]

Sports or wildlife photographers wondering whether Topaz's claims of miraculously removing noise in high ISO photographs are valid can rest assured--they are. Fantastic product.

[swampfrog]

Sports or wildlife photographers wondering whether Topaz's claims of miraculously removing noise in high ISO photographs are valid can rest assured--they are. Fantastic product.

Here's an example of what this is capable of. This image was at dusk earlier this month (6:55 pm more or less, not sure the clock on the camera is quite correct).
1/200, f/5.6, ISO 16000 (yes, 16 thousand). Click on any image to see larger sizes.

First without any processing other than some minor contrast and exposure, essentially the RAW image.



Here's after a pass through Topaz DeNoise AI. Noise is just gone. And almost no loss of sharpness.



And then some additional processing.