Older Interesting Photographs

I have been slowly reviewing pictures that I took earlier in my career and what I have seen is how vastly that I have improved.  I was taking pictures with a high ISO of around 1600 in bright sun and a very high shutter speed.  As I been reprocessing these pictures, I had to removed a lot of noise.  Here is just a selection of some of my older interesting pictures.

Green Heron at Daniel Webster Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary

"Who Is Watching Who" a whale watching trip Out to Stellwagon Bank and they humpback whale right next to the boat

Black-billed Magpie In Rocky Mount National Park

California Condor along the Big Sur

Cook's Chasm on the Oregon coast, where, when the tide comes in the waves, spray through a blowhole

Least Auklet on St. Paul, in the Pribilof's Located in the Bering Sea

Light-footed Clapper Rail, and endangered species located in the Tijuana Estuar y near San Diego, California

Mola Mola or Ocean Sunfish

Mute Swan and Cygnet

Whimbril in flight South Beach Chatham Massachusetts

Specials from Hunts Photo

Hunts Photo are having a special until the end of the year.  I utilize both products and wrote a Blog on the Puffin Pad previously - http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6293601039825331050#editor/target=post;postID=2120927862502860323

All Specials are good through 12/31/2012

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Last 10 Favorite Photographs of 2012

Here is the final 10 photographs that I picked for 2012

Crested caracara coming in to land on a tree limb in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas

Eastern screech owl photograph obtained on an owl prowl at Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary

Taken in Yellowstone National Park, I call this "Everybody Wants to Get into the Act."

I had converted this high key photograph of a Costa Rican hummingbird and converted into a Japanese-style print

Keel-billed Toucan photograph the obtained in Costa Rica

This image is one of the set that est. the presence of a Little Egret in Massachusetts his fall.  The little egret is a Eurasian visitor.

Snowy Owl at Duxbury Beach

The Smalls Falls and Rangley Maine.  A beautiful falls gorgeous color to the surrounding rocks

And other Eurasian visitor, Northern Lapwing.  Extremely rare, was brought here probably by the winds of Hurricane Sandy

Northern Hawk Owl, had a travel all away up into Maine, in order to photograph this lovely bird

Lightning and the Lightning Bug™

I have always wanted to capture lightning and found that just utilizing a shutter release did not work.  Earlier this year, Hunts Photo had the Lightning Bug™ available on sale and I purchased the unit and the correct cable to connect to my Nikon cameras that utilizes the ten-pin remote terminal.  When you purchase the unit, you have to make sure you order the right cable for your camera system.  The unit utilizes a standard 9 V battery for operation.  The Lightning Bug™ package also comes with a CD that includes a PDF instruction manual.  The manual has all the information that you need to set up the unit and the camera for use, including the settings for daytime or nighttime use.

I'm sorry to say that I have not been in a location that offered me wide vistas with lightning in the distance.  I have taken the unit when I've traveled to Texas in Costa Rica, and even though thunderstorms were forecast, none occurred when I was there so I could not utilize the Lightning Bug™

All of the photographs that I have taken of lightning were from the front porch of my condominium.  Also, the majority of photographs that I obtained were during the day or close to the twilight with only one episode of nighttime lightning.  My grandson, who lives with me and also is a photographer has utilized the Lightning Bug™ at night.

The nicest part of photographing from my front porch is after I set up the camera and Lightning Bug™ and cover the lens and portions of the camera with a rain cover and turn on the unit, I can be nice and dry in my house relaxing and having a drink during the thunderstorm.

Presently, Hunts Photo, again, is having a sale on the Lightning Bug™ and it can be purchased at

http://www.huntsphotoandvideo.com/detail_page.cfm?productid=LIGHTNINGBUG&mfg=MK%20Controls 

The price will increase after the first of the year, but if you order now, you will be able to get the great price.

Here are some examples of photographs that my grandson than I took of Lightning.

Lightning

Lightning

Lightning captured with a fish-eye lens

You will capture skies that were lit up by lightning, but the lightning could be outside of the angle of view of your lens

Lightning

Clouds and Sky Being Lit by Lightning

Lightning

Lightning

First 10 Favorite Photographs of 2012

It is coming to the end of 2012, and like a lot of other photographers, I'm trying to pick out my best 10 pictures of the year.  I having a tough time and so I decided on my top 20 pictures.  I will present the pictures into separate blogs of 10 photographs in each blog.

Migrate granddaughter Abby on her fifth birthday

Black skimmer taken on the Gulf coast of Texas during a trip to photograph the whooping cranes.  I like this photograph.  Because of the skimmer having its wings spread and its mouth open

Photograph taken at Allens Pond Stone Barn of the Geminids meteor shower

Photograph taken at Allens Pond Stone Barn of the Geminids meteor shower.  Taken with a fish-eye lens

Cathedral Falls, near Gauley Bridge in West Virginia a great area for scenics and for birding. 

And another fisheye view of the night sky and a meteor taken at the Stone Barn at Allens Pond Sanctuary.  I have been holding workshops on nights sky in media photography for the sanctuary.

Acadia National Park, and other great location for photography.  These are some reads At Jordan Pond.

Night sky and milky way over the life-saving station, at Races Point, Province Lands, Cape Cod National Seashore

The USS Constitution under sail In Boston Harbor on the occasion of old Ironsides 100th anniversary of its fight with the British ship Guerriere.

Bass Harbor Head Light On Mount Desert Island.  A favorite location for photographers and I like this photograph, despite having mostly cloudy though skies.  However, for a brief moment the sun broke through the clouds.

Why I prefer RAW rather than JPEG

One of the big controversies, right now in photography is do you shoot in RAW or do you shoot in JPEG.  Also, if you do shoot in RAW do you also make a copy at the same time into JPEG.  So I going to give you my personal opinion.  When I first started into photography with a digital camera, I really did not understand the difference between the two formats.  As I have progressed in my learning, I have come to realize that there is a big difference in the two modalities.  To me JPEG is where you take the picture, the camera processes the picture and you go to the local store and print out your pictures.  RAW on the other hand is like taking a negative into the darkroom and utilizing all your adjustment tools that you have available to create what you feel the picture should be.  Since, when I export a picture that I created in RAW for use nowadays on the web, I can convert that picture into a JPEG, which now has all the adjustments I made to the RAW file.

Let me show you what I mean.  Here is a photograph of an eight point buck that I took earlier in the year.  It is a JPEG of the RAW file without any adjustments either in Lightroom or Photoshop.  To my eyes, the picture is pretty bland.

White-tailed Deer – Original

Now here is the same picture, which is a JPEG of the raw file that was converted into a TIFF file during my post-processing.  Originally I was happy with this picture, however, as I was reviewing older photographs, I re-looked at the picture that I had converted and was not happy.

White-tailed Deer – Original Edit

Now, if I had taken this picture only as a JPEG, it would been more difficult to re-create my original impression of what the photograph should be.  Since I had the original RAW file I was able to reprocess the photograph, utilizing first, Adobe Camera Raw in Lightroom, then exported the file to Photoshop, where first, I increased the canvas size to give me more room on the right side of the picture, use the magic wand to select the new area of the campus and utilized contents aware fill to to fill in the extended canvas.  Next I utilized the NIK software (each in their own layer), first Vivezia then Color Efex Pro 2-Detail Extractor, Tonal Contrast, and White Neutralizer, then adjusted each of the filters utilizing control points.  I saved what I had created as a TIFF file.  I then wanted to see how the picture would look with the edges vignetted, so I restarted and a new layer, Color Efex Pro 2 and selected the vigennting filter and applied the effect.  I then re-saved the image as a new TIFF file.

Here is the final results

White-tailed Deer – Final Edit

White-tailed Deer – Final with Vigennting

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Quadrantid Meteor Shower Gathering January 3, 2013

The next meteor show is the morning of Thursday, January 3, and since the Quadrantid meteor shower has a very narrow peak and the waning gibbous moon rise about the time that the meteors radiant is coming up. 

There will be a gathering at Allens Pond Stone Barn, Horseneck Road, Dartmouth, Massachusetts starting at midnight on Thursday, January 3.   Anybody that would like to come and view the show is welcome.  Coffee, hot chocolate and snacks will be available.  All you need is to wear warm clothing and bring a chair. 
If you are interested in trying to photograph the meteors, please contact me at mborn@photobee1.com  and I will  email you what equipment that you should  have and I will help you set up your equipment.

The Quadrantid meteor shower is capable of matching the  meteor rates of the better-known Perseid and Geminid showers.  It has been known to produce up to 60 or more meteors per hour.  Last year, before the clouds came in, it was a spectacular show.

Postprocessing and NIK Software

This morning, I decided to work on some pictures that I took this summer of the boats that were moored at MacMillan's Pier in Provincetown Harbor.  I captured a five image bracket of a boat and exported to NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and had the software create an HDR image and then I did some adjustments to the picture utilizing one of the NIK presets as a starting point and then adjusted it to my taste.

I then selected one of the photographs from the bracketed series and first adjusted it in light room, then exported it also into NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and utilized one of +Jason Odell's presets, that I obtained by purchasing his guide to HDR Efex Pro 2.  I then adjusted the picture by utilizing all the sliders and control points to produce the image that I visualized.

For me, NIK software is a valuable tool in helping me to post process my photographs

The Photographer's Guide to HDR Efex Pro 2 by Jason Odell is available from http://luminescentphoto.com/webstore/index.html

Original file

Five image bracket, combined into HDR by NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and then with my adjustments

Post processing first with Light Room, then with a Jason Odell preset in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2, then with my adjustments

 

 

Again to my readers, which one of the three to you like the best.  I do believe photography is a art and that post processing on a computer is the same.  What I used to do working in a dark room without all the chemicals.

So again, happy holidays to everybody.