After the shooting is done

So you have a hard drive full of great images-what next, You have shown them on your web site and on forums and even one or two are in print on your wall, Is that it? are they now destined to spend eternity on your hard drive where nobody can see them, Well there is an answer and that is to get them in print-a book-your own personal book, Just like in the days of film where you would get a set of prints and put them in an album to show your friends every time they visited, There are lots of companies now offering this service, I recently had a couple of books made up, One for my in laws as a present showing the times that they came and visited us in France and Switzerland and a personal one again showing our time living abroad,Friends and family who stopped by,places visited and some of my favorite wildlife shots whilst we lived there, I used a company called Bob Books as a friend has used them on many occasions and was always pleased with the package and service, The procedure is simple,Download the software from their website and use the templates on the pages to drag the images onto,There are a variety of templates and you can have a full page shot down to thumnails,Put some text and go to the next page-simple, I converted my images to full size Jpegs-Srbg and dragged them onto the page expecting to either get a message saying the file was too large or get to the end and it not loading due to the huge amount of info being uploaded, I need not have worried as it all loaded within minutes and a couple of weeks later it was delivered, Now i have to say that the image quality is excellent as is the feel of the book, Its not going to fall part, Everybody who has seen it has been impressed and have said that they will be getting a book or 2 done, Although Bob Books are based in the UK the actual printing is done in Switzerland which was spooky as we had just moved from there, I know there are plenty of other companies offering the same like photobox,Mpix and even your local high street processor but i have only seen and used Bob Books and can give my recommendation to them-Top product


Dave

From the archives - Marsh Harriers at Minsmere

Now is a great time of year to get along to RSPB Minsmere and take a visit to either the Bittern or Island Hides to get some in flight shots of the Marsh Harriers.

I have been there for the last two years and have had some great views.

Best time is first thing so you can get some space in the hides and also to catch the early light.

If you are lucky then you will also get some great views of Bittern too - either flight shots from the Bittern Hide or ground shots from the Island Hide. I usually have some bright spark tell me that they had great views ten minutes previously.

On a good spring day it is easy enough to see up to 100 species in a full day. You can also get great close up pictures of Avocet and Swallows down by the Sluice - just sit on the ground by the posts and wait for them to come to you.

Minsmere really is the birders jewel in the crown and every photographer should get there at least once in their life, and now is the best time of the year

Martin

Workflow

Firstly there is no right way of doing things, Everybody has their own way and what works for you may not work for others, I only shoot in RAW (Adobe RGB Colour space) and there are many different RAW converters like Adobes Photoshop and Lightroom, Paintshop Pro,Capture One,Canons DPP,Nikons NX2, Breezebrowser and Bibble to name but a few, I can only tell you what i use and how i use it at the moment but things are always subject to change, As i have mentioned on here before i use Breezebrowser purely to browse my images and delete the images that are not up to scratch, I also use it to rename the images and add some metadata-fast simple to use and cheap to buy,
Once i have my final selection of images in Breezebrowser i copy the RAW files into my WIP (work in progress) folder and also into their own folders say fox or waterfowl, I then open Photoshop CS4 and view the images in Bridge, after selecting an image and double clicking on it the image will open up in Camera Raw (ACR) where i will (if needed)
1,Check and Adjust Colour Temperature
2,Check and Adjust Exposure
3,Check and Adjust Recovery
4,Check and Adjust Fill Light
5,Check and Adjust Blacks
6, Add some Clarity,vibrance and Sat
Whilst in ACR i will level the image if needed, Maybe use the Grad filter if working on a landscape and may use the Adjustment brush to selectively lighten or darken parts of the image
The adjustment brush and grad tools are truly excellent and really easy to use-worth upgrading from CS2 or CS3 for,
So now we have finished in ACR we open the image into the main part of photoshop, Here i use adjustment layers and check and adjust
1,Levels (all RGB)
2,Curves
3,Saturation if needed
4,Selective Colour (Normally +2 black and neutrals)
Once these are done i go to Layer-Flatten image then check and remove any dust spots,At this point i may use some Highlight/Shadow and then Convert from a 16 bit to 8bit,The image is now finished and saved as a Tiff file-Full size, After this i then resize and save as a 1MG Tiff for agency submission and then Sharpen with USM (125/O.2/0) 3-4 times and save for the web (convert to Srgb box ticked) for web/website use. The full size Tiffs are saved in their perspective files as before and the images are then deleted from the WIP folder
This is basically my workflow at the moment, I do have Lightroom 2 and will be incorporating into the workflow soon, One thing i will say is that when processing try to be subtle in your approach,Dont over do the highlight/shadow and saturation, Try to make the image as natural as possible

Dave

Techniques - Macro and AI Servo

OK - so not really true macro per se, but close up.

Normally close up work for me is manual focus and manual focus only using Live View, DOF preview and 5x magnification.

But just occasionally we are set little challenges in how we capture an image.

It was under such circumstances yesterday that I found I needed to totally change my approach.

I had been watching many different butterflies in my wildlife garden and have generally always struggled to get anything half decent. They usually spot me coming from too far away and with the 100mm macro - my usual choice you need to get close.

So what to do?

Well I put together a combination of my 1Dmk3, 70-200f2.8 IS L, at 200mm Fl, with the 1.4 EFTC, plus a 20mm extension tube. This enabled me to get the minimum focus closer than the 1.4m minimum distance. I guess I could have used the 300f4 IS L as this also has a min. focus distance of 1.5m.

But why AI Servo?

My subject, a beautiful Orange Tip butterfly, showing its undersides was resting on some Shepherds Purse, of which there is plenty in the garden at the moment. However, there was quite a breeze and the thing was flapping about in the breeze. I tried to use the standard One Shot focus mode and I tried to manually focus but all the results were poor.

So I set the AI servo response to fastest in the Custom Function settings and set the AF to AI Servo mode. This way as the subject was moving back and forth the AF would continue to track.

However, it was important that I froze that movement as well so I needed to ensure a decent shutter speed, so I opted to ramp up to ISO800. This is a setting that the 1Dmk3 handles exceptionally well, provided you expose correctly.


The final tip for would be butterfly photographers is to manage your depth of field. When they are resting like this, go for the side on shot, get perpendicular to the subject as the DOF you need is at its lowest. You will be surprised how much aperture you need - this was taken at f10

Martin

Lets Talk

I have always fancied doing a 'Lets Talk' general chit chat ditty so will take this opportunity to do the first one, So a week away has ended and now back at home downloading the images to be viewed on the big screen to see if the week has been a success or failure and most of all reflect on the week to know if it was fun as that's the most important thing, We often get carried away with looking through the view finder without taking time to look around, I thought this once when in India, A tiger had a kill right in front of me and i happily clicked away until i ran out of film, It was a great experience but more so when i could put the camera down and sit back and watch the events like a normal tourist taking in the whole scene not just part of it, I had no expectations last week,an open mind as it was just a recce, So in that sense the week was a success as i came away with some very nice images and made lots of mental notes for when i return i a few weeks, I knew that the deer would be without antlers and that the plant life would be a bit behind which it was, I didn't expect the place to be quite as beautiful as it was and wasn't expecting the turkeys to be so co-operative, All in all a good week.The weather could have been better,I had heavy rain,snow,sunshine and dark cloudy days so a real mixed bag but know from experience that mountain photography is that way-unpredictable,I didn't have much time to play around with my Lee filter grads but it as obvious that i will need some ND filters for the waterfall shots a i couldn't get as low a shutter speed as i would have liked,so more expense-its never ending, The Nikon D3 was used more than the D300 this time as the light was low most of the time, I don't shoot with the D300 over ISO 400 as grain starts to become apparent but i will happily shoot past ISO800 with the D3 and as long as you are careful with the metering and get your exposure spot on grain is very minimal, Another thing that came to mind when shooting was that i only had one morning where i would shot at a low ISO and that if i had an all singing all dancing Nikon D3X i would have struggled as i hear it starts to get grainy at ISO 400 and is best at 200 and below,For landscape work it would be fine but for a lot of my type of work i feel that i would struggle with it-doesn't stop me from wanting one though, So that's one week out of the way and planning the next trip in a few weeks along with future trips to the mountains later in the year,trips to the coast and a trip to Colorado-looks like the year is starting to get busy

Dave

Views - Some days are just no good

Dave wrote a great post a couple of weeks ago titled Purple Days. Well sometimes you get the reverse of purple days - well at least I did today photographically.

As per Good Friday, or should I say crappy light Friday, the light again today was awful, and you just know that it is not worth getting the camera out of the bag.

I took a trip around some of the locations in the northern part of Warwickshire to Lea Marston trying to find some Black Necked Grebes that were reported on Birdguides. But drew a blank there - saw lots of other great sites - none of them close enough or indeed in the preferred position to photograph. Loads of Warblers - Willow, Blackcap and Reed. Plenty of Great Crested Grebes - even doing the weed dance. Great through the binocs but just not near enough.

So onto the next location, Brandon Marsh - again plenty there - Snipe, Little Ringed Plover, Ringed Plover, Greylag, Barnacle, White Front (lonesome) and Canada Geese. Plenty of wildfowl as well. A couple of Sparrow Hawk. More warblers - as before plus Sedge and Cettis. House and Sand Martins, plus Swallows.

So what with that lot, plus Kestrel, Buzzard and a couple of Sparrowhawk any birder should be pretty happy - and I was too.

But no images!!

I always tell myself philosophically that I go out to watch wildlife and if I get an image then I consider it a bouns. Sometimes I really wonder if I mean that - today was no exception

But...........but there will be better days ahead. I have checked out two great butterfly and wildflower sites, so will look forward to that as the season progresses :-)

Martin

Trip Report-Smokey Mountains-Tennessee 3

Yesterday morning was lovely, I arrived early and went into the park,The Turkeys were at the entrance as normal, As they were distant i decided to come back to them later and wanted to get into a position to get some early morning landscape shots in,The mist was in a distant valley so i decided to shoot with a long lens at distance rather than make my way into the valley, A long lens will give the image compression, 'pulling' distant things together, I used the Nikon 200-400 with the D3, Shooting with a bean bag from the car, The sun was coming up to my left and just hitting the lower trees-it looked stunning with the mountains in the distance, I shot both landscape and portrait mode for the agent to choose and i shot wide (200mm) and zoomed in (400mm), Its amazing how some places can give you inspiration to shoot and this place does it for me, After i bagged some landscapes i went on to some deer and then back for the turkeys, A big male had made his way to the road side and whilst displaying with his back to me i managed to get into position so that when he turned around i was ready to shoot, He didn't seem to give a damn and carried on as if i wasn't there, When i left the park i decided to take some shots of the many streams with small waterfalls and bracketed my exposures so when loaded onto the PC i could HDR the image which i must admit to being very impressed with-more of that to come
Today could not have been more different, Within 30 mins of entering the park the day turned into night as the sky darkened (ISO 1600 i managed 1/8 sec) then loud claps of thunder, bolts of lightening striking the mountains around me and torrential rain, I stayed another 2 hrs but it never improved so i called it a day-Last day tomorrow so fingers crossed


Dave

Trip Report - Good Friday from Gloucestershire

I took a day trip out around a few locations in Gloucestershire with a fellow birdwatcher/photographer and friend to see what we could find.

The first location yielded this delightful Red Crested Pochard which is now a breeding species in this location, rather than an escapee.

It was a good location with sightings of Bullfinch and a Woodlark overhead. There were also decent numbers of Sand Martin and Swallows too




On to the next location to see Grey Wagtail. This delightful male bird was running along a dry stone wall just above the river










And his 'wife' decided that should would sit over the river of this barbed wire. A marked contrast between the delicate nature of the bird against the harsh intent of the barbed wire







Then on to WWT Slimbridge to take a look at the kingfishers. We saw them briefly but all at too great a distance to get decent images. So around to the South Lake hide, which is probably the best in terms of point of view. A couple of Little Grebes entertained us for a while








A short while later this beautiful Great Crested Grebe and partner came across, this one catching a small fish which was interesting to watch





Sadly, it was horrible grey flat light all day, so the images are not good from a light perspective but thought I would share with you as a record of some of the day.

Martin