Trip Report-Smokey Mountains-Tennesse 2

I didn't make it into the Smokies yesterday-The weather was very bad with heavy Snow showers and i had a couple od things to sort out, I had looked at the forecast for today and it looked pretty good so i was itching to get out this morning and arrived well before the gates opened,There was still snow on the mountains and a report of 12'' at the top-all in one day,The morning was bright and frosty with a thin layer of snow at the base of the mountains, As per their name the floor had a nice thick layer of mist that quickly burnt off,but not before i shot some landscapes and a couple of deer, The Turkeys were still near the entrance but still distant so i hoped that i would bump into some more further round the park, Little did i know that it would be near te end of the loop that some Turkeys popped out of the woodland but were followed (too) closely by a local photographer who literally herded them along-no point in staying there so i drove off but as i did another single turkey appeared and strutted his stuff right in front of me, I took some full body type shots before grabbing the big gun (600) which had a 1.4x and D300 attached, I had seen an image a long time ago that really impressed me of these strange looking bird, I looked through the view finder and it was full of turkey, the shutter speed was very low 1/40 but i didnt want to up the ISO so a steady hand was called for and i managed plenty of shots to make sure that i had nailed it-brilliant only 2 days in and my target was in the bag, I drove off very pleased with myself and quickly viewed a large woodpecker through the trees-a pilated-it was massive (size of a crow) and only a few feet from the floor, I tried from the car but there was too many branches in the way, I slowly got out of the car and quietly crept through the woodland only for a truck to pull up to see what i was doing and the bird flew, I carried on driving to the camp site to see if any bears had been seen, i grabbed a coffee and waited, A few American robins landed nearby so i grabbed my camera and a young lad came from nowhere and chased them off-looking very pleased with himself-dont you just love em, Once the kid had gone i carried on waiting to see if they returned, they didnt but instead another pilated woodpecker landed in the tree right in front of me, I only had the camera and beanbag so had to handhold the monster lens,after a had some shots in the bag i decided to quickly go to the car and grab the tripod,The bird hung around and as i grabbed another couple of shots it dropped out of the tree and fed around a stump close by-well all my christmas's came at once and it stayed for about 10 mins and in the shade so i didnt have to worry about blowing the bright whites, The Pilated is a bird that was high on my wanted list when i came to the states and to have one so obliging was amazing-what a morning and what a place, I cant wait for the 'fall' as this place is soo picturesque during the winter it will be amazing with the golden folage


Dave

Gear we use and Abuse - Graduated Filters

Although Dave and I are primarily wildlife photographers, we both do a bit of landscape photography too. There is a natural fit really with the places that we go and see.

Now the best landscape photography is all about light and how we use it to the best of our ability. The same scene can have many different looks as a result of the different light from the different times of the day and at different times of the year with the sun is at a different height.


One of the tools that we can use to help us control that light is the Neutral density graduated filter, or ND grad as they are known for short.

The image above used a 2 stop hard edged ND grad to hold back the brighter sky and allow me to get detail in the much darker foreground.

Both Dave and I use the Lee Filters system. It is quite expensive as filter systems go, but as the old mantra goes 'You get what you pay for'.

Today I will cover just the resin filters that I use. Later blogposts will cover how we attach to the camera and also the use of polarising filters.

Lee sell ND grads in sets of three ranging from 1 stop to 3 stops, which they sell 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9. The number of stops indicate the amount of light that they 'hold back'.



This image shows the full set of the hard edge grads. the term hard edge refers to the transition from the filter through to the clear. Hard meaning the transition is short and soft where it is more gradual as you will see below.



On this image you can see the difference in the transition between hard and soft.

I would tend to use the hard edge when I shooting seascapes like the image above and then use the soft edge when I might have some parts of the image in the filtered part where I want less filtration. You have to be very careful, particularly with mountain landscapes that you don't end up with heavily darkened parts of the scene as well as the sky.

This is one area where I use a special filter that I had made to order which is the blending filter (last filter on the right in the image).

This filter goes from 3 stops at the top and blends evenly to zero at the bottom with no harsh edge stops. This is one of my favourite and most often used filters to give methat gradual transition and avoid the obvious steps.

One useful tip I learned was to use the DOF preview button to better see the effects of the filter. More modern cameras have live view and with a combination of that, the histogram displayed and the DOF button depressed, you really can see every bit of information you need and mistakes or wasted shots really shouldn't occur - but we will still make those mistakes - I know I do.

So look out for future posts on the rest of the system and polarisers

Martin

Trip Report-Smokey Mountains-Tennesse

Yesterday i drove from North Carolina over the Great Smokey Mountains to the Tennesse side, I arrived about 2pm and dropped my cases off at the motel,I grabbed my gear and headed towards Cades Cove, I have never been before but had done my homework, Cades Cove is in the Smokies National Park and is a very historic part of the park with ancient buildings dotted around, Its very well known and extremley busy, If cades cove was a NP it would be the busiest in the States-very popular to say the least, The animals and White Tailed Deer in particular are very easy to approach and if you see an image of a WT Deer published chances are it was taken here, I knew i was out of season, the deer have rutted and lost their antlers,For deer shots its best in the 'Fall' and i have a cabin booked especially for that-Then it will be crazy with people, One thing that suprised me is that if you park up you are free to walk off trail and approach the animals, I drove around the 11 mile loop road and viewed lots of deer along with some wild turkey, Then about half way around i saw a black blob near some woodland, I grabbed the bins and it was a bear so i grabbed the gear and headed down towards it,when i got closer i looked behind me and i had about 100 people running down towards me mainly young kids shouting and screaming, The parents egging them on to get closer, Luckily there was a ranger at hand and he did his best to keep the crowd back especially when we realised that there was a young bear with it, I only had the D3 and 600, In my panic i forgot the extenders,It was good to see but because of the crowds the bears kept distant but a good start, Today i was at the entrance at dawn and waited with a couple of other photographers for the gates to open, Instantly there were Wild Turkey going through the courting process and what magnificent creatures they are when strutting their stuff,They were way too distant but i did managed to get close to one later on although he though he was a capercaille and stayed in the woodland, I also bumped into a group of deer and decided to get some shots and 2 of the deer decided to have a fight and stood on their back legs and bitch slapped each other like march hares, The weather today was very cold and late this evening it started snowing-snow is predicted for the next day or 2 and freezing temperatures,not what i expected and it will put paid to any landscapes with sky and to any wildflower photography,One thing that is here in abundance are waterfalls so i have already been having a play in the low light,The D3 and 24-70 are a match made in heaven for this and as well as full waterfall landscapes i have been doing some details stuff at different shutter speeds to get different effects, With the unpredictable weather we will have to see what happens to the wildlife but if i can i will concentrate on the turkeys whilst they are courting, I was lucky today when i found a group of deer and the main male still had a 'rack' but i bet he is the only one


Dave

Views - Where to find your subjects

I was browsing around the web and blogosphere late last week and read an article that got me thinking.

It was a request for the locations of a number of different species of wildlife for photography.

Now maybe I am being a little sniffy here but it did rather smack of laziness.

My philosophy starts with researching my subject first, finding out its seasons, habitat and then locations. There really is so much resource available on the web and in print that it really is unforgivable not to just carry out some basic legwork yourself.

Sites like The Gloster Birder in local terms for me and Birdguides across the rest of the country will tell you what is about. I subscribe to Birdguides and have email alerts, so when I go away I can either ping it to my netbook or Blackberry.

But there are dozens of great books available, some of which I have linked below. The 'Where to watch Birds in' series covers all counties of the UK and also pretty much the rest of the world.

The BBC 'Natures Calendar' also gives a seasonal glance around the sites of the UK.

Mike Lane has published a great little book called 'Where to Photograph wildlife in Britain' - a number of sites in here I have visited having bought the book.

Amazon is a great source and usually about the best value for most of these.

Then of course, there is our great friend Google, just type in what you are looking for and you will almost certainly find it.

Martin

Processing-Colour Casts

Images may have a colour cast for many reasons but by careful processing there is no reason for them to be there,Its not always easy to see a colour cast until somebody mentions that its a tad green or blue, After doing your minor adjustments in ACR open the image in Photoshop,Go to Levels and you will see the Channel:RGB which has a drop down bar,Click in the drop down bar and you will see it says RGB,Red,Green,Blue, I start at the bottom by clicking on the blue,Check to see if the sliders need to move 'in' to the histogram the same as you would normally in levels,Hold the ALT key down whilst you move the left or right slider in,The screen will go a solid colour,Keep your finger on the alt all the time until you see some speckles coming into the image-back the slider off until the speckles disappear and continue doing the red and green channels in the same way,Once you have done the red,green and blue go back to the RGB channel and see if that needs adjusting and once done you should not have any colour casts-easy

Dave

Local Patch - Quick Garden Update

The sun is shining brightly again and the butterflies are coming in frequently now. With a few Small Whites now showing, and the first Peacock today as well. Brimstones and Commas still showing well too.

Bird activity is less now as they are in full nesting mode. Wood Pigeons, House Sparrows and Blackbirds are still eating us out of house and home. The male Blackcap has been showing well from time to time. Fabulous views this morning of the male Sparrowhawk who flew directly at me as I was watching out of the first floor window, then banked round just about 8 feet away - stunning sight. The Sparrows don't appear to be taking any notice of the two boxes that I have put up for them, but I will keep my eyes open.

All seven large blobs of frog spawn in the pond have now disappeared and the place is teaming with lively little tadpoles.

I haven't noticed any new wildlfowers out yet since my last update, but the bluebell leaves are coming up as are the Arum Lillies, so I hope to see something from those in the next few weeks. There were supposed to be some Wood Anemones in that particular area in the mix I put down but these haven't showed. The local woods are teaming with them at the moments so maybe they need another year before they will show.

Martin

Techniques-on board Flash for wildlife continued

Following on from Martins post yesterday I thought I would show my way of using flash with wildlife photography, Martin prefers the Manual exposure method whereas I like the AV method, When using flash in Manual the flash becomes the main light source whereas in AV or TV its just 'fill' lighting so where Martin needs to balance the flash with the ambient light to stop having a black background i simply need to compensate on the flash to stop over lighting the subject,When i used film/slide cameras in the past I found that by dialing in -1.7ev it gave perfect fill lighting,just enough to remove shadows and give a glint in the subjects eye,Today's sensors are more sensitive than film and i find that -2 1/3 is about right,obviously subject distance plays a part but at normal shooting distance like 6 metres with a 600mm lens this setting is good, At normal distances like this its not necessary to use a better beamer but i like to as it concentrates the light onto the subject, Its a powerful tool and you will need to practice with it and keep an eye on the histogram, Flash is good but too much flash where it is obvious can also ruin an image,
I am off to the Great Smokie Mountains next week and hope to get some wildlife,macro and landscape shooting in, I am leaving Sunday so will be spending the day travelling but will leave a few words on correcting colour casts for Martin to post

Dave

Techniques - On board Flash for wildlife

Following on from a thread over at Canon Fodder forums , I thought I would put down a few musings of the whys and wherefores of using flash when shooting wildlife.

Firstly, you need to understand why you want to use it and then secondly will it suit the subject matter, and then finally and in my book most importantly will it cause your subject any distress.

Remember welfare of the subject comes first.

But lets assume you have ticked all those boxes to your satisfaction or at least the second two, but why?

Well there are some times that the ambient light is too strong or nor sufficient.

Too strong? - We have all seen wedding photographers using flash in bright sunlight to put some light into harsh shadows. Same with wildlife. It can work.

But we may have situations with very flat light or insufficient light and we might want to just pop a little bit of fill light in just to balance the image.

Now this Moorhen isn't a particularly brilliant image, but it was shot with the 500 + 1.4, so 700mm @ f 5.6, 1/125 sec and ISO1600, and M Mode. Flash was set to M mode with the flash extender. Now the EOS flash system does a pretty good job of flash metering, and am sure the Nikon system is at least as good.

So this is a ambient balanced exposure. What the flash has done has put a decent amount of detail and colour into the bird in really dark conditions.

You will see one flaw that you need to be aware with this type of shot. There is a very slight shadow cast behind the bird as a result of the flash being raised above the centre line of the lens. It is slight but there so one thing to remember when using it for this type of image.

It works a little better with the Great Spotted Woodpecker, as the shadow cast has nothing to land on. But again very careful observation will show some unnatural catch lighting in the eye with reflection from the back of the retina. It is not too bad, but don't try with Owls - with their massive eyes you really will have a very ghostly apparition.

It has worked pretty well with the Robin below, particularly where you have a bright highlight sky behind. With careful dialling in of the power settings you can let the flash manage the exposure on the subject, and meter to underexpose for the background in the camera settings. So in this case, I underexposed the background by about 1 stop and set the flash exposure to give a zero compensation. Both camera and flash in M mode again.

Again, you can see the eye reflection has it's problems, but the exposure is reasonably well balanced and certainly enables the colours to show well on a dreadful light day.

All shots were taken at ISO1600, and I have not used any noise reduction either in camera or post processing. However, if I wanted to print these I would run some NR on the backgrounds.

I used the Canon 580 EX flashhead with the Kirk Extender, which is essentially the same as shown on the opening picture of Dave's set up with the Better Beamer. They are recommended for lenses above 300mm and are said to be worth about 2 to 3 stops worth of additional distance. They basically comprise of couple of bits of plastic, designed for your particluar flashhead, with a stick on Fresnel lens on the front to concentrate the throw of the light. On the Canon, it is recommended to manually set the zoom setting on the head to 50mm, which is I guess the optimised distance for the light to lens gap.

But we will make that the subject of another blogpost at a later date.

Now my technical skills with the flash can always be improved so if there any pearls of wisdom that I have missed then please let us know.

Martin