Category Archives: Birds
Lake Superior Gull
Friends, this seagull is standing on a cement wall over Lake Superior and I liked the image and so will share the original and the altered image in an animated gif. I used a mask to limit my changes to the bird only so I didn’t sharpen the background and make it more noisy. Experimenting with photoshop so I can make adjustments faster and more decisively. Looking at the altered image I may have overdone the feather detail of the belly, but i like what i did with the chest and head. Maybe a 50% mask of the lower part of the bird would help. Hmmmmm. So the image below is a 50% mask on the lower belly feathers so those feathers don’t look like they were combed through. til Tomorrow MJ
Multiple exposure bursts
Friends, today we will address shooting machine gun style at birds. That is shooting in multiple exposure bursts. When I shot film I developed a habit of shooting triples of every image because my mirror slapping up and down would cause some vibration and that would record on the film as a slight blur. Now with digital captures, I can shoot multiple images without the expense of wasted film on the first and third image in the series. Now when I have a suitable subject I still shoot multiple images in a burst mode and I have a camera that will shoot six-seven images/second with a single push of the shutter. I can shoot 15-20 images before releasing the shutter. The reason for this is illustrated by these two shots of a peregrine falcon. The top image was the second image in a series of six and while the bird is curious, his head angle reflects too much sky and he looks kind of scary. The bottom image is the sixth in the same series and shows the bird stretching out a little to check me out and his eye is brown like it should be, a much more relaxed bird. So lean on the shutter button and see what you get. til Tomorrow MJ
Redpoll at my Feeder
Friends, this is another animated gif showing the adjustments that i made to this image, so that the image follows my rules more closely. In short, I simplified the background and darkened a bit, cleaned up the eye, lightened the shadow on the front of the bird, and cleaned up the food on his bill and ran detail extractor from Color Effex Pro 4. I am learning a lot from Arthur Morris website Birdsasart, his site makes good reading for the curious (like me). This is one of the Redpolls who come to my bird feeder every day. Winter is my time to study up for the other three seasons. til Tomorrow MJ
Four Rules
Friends, I have four rules (for myself) before I publish a bird image on this blog. 1) eye must be sharp,2) must be highlight in the eye 3) the light must be good (not too much shadow), and 4) the background must be somewhat amorphous (bokeh). if three of the four are satisfied, I may also publish, but I prefer that all four rules be followed (by me). This winter gold finch image is an example of the four rules, when they are applied. Practicing at my bird feeder, Simple ??, til Tomorrow MJ 
Too Much Detail
Friends, this image of a ruffed grouse in a birch tree illustrates a common problem when photographing birds in their environment, too much detail around the bird. However, the eye was sharp and had a highlight and the light had a reasonable angle so I decided to show it to you today. After risking our lives by stopping on a blacktop road and scurrying around on the shoulders, I thought maybe the image had some merit. The grouse love the birch buds this time of year (winter) and are often perched among the branches eating their fill. til Tomorrow MJ
Weekly Photo Challenge:Resolved
Friends, this Northern Goshawk is showing some attitude, much like myself this past year. My sister has a saying for the condition, “no fuse, no filter”. This year 2013 I am going to try to change my attitude a bit and be a bit more mellow. Hopefully this bird will help to remind me that bad attitude doesn’t always get fed, when you are a grown-up, you just get kicked out of the nest. til Tomorrow MJ
Harrier Portrait
Friends, More book images to work on, this image of a Harrier was tilted so the bird looked wrong. In straightening the image I found that two corners were white background, selecting the white corners, i filled with content-aware. This did a pretty good job of filling the background area, but still had to clone some texture in, after cropping the image, the headroom needed to be increased. So much for the photoshop details, if you need more, just ask. The plumage of this bird and his lemon-yellow eyes mark him as a semi-adult. His gray feathers around his ruff are just starting to appear and when he is totally adult, his back feathers will be very gray. He looks like an owl with his facial disk, but he is a Harrier. til Tomorrow MJ
Before and After
Friends, today I am processing more images for my book on Hawk Ridge, this image of a Northern Goshawk grabbed me but i didn’t have a solution for the problem of no space at the top of the bird’s head. Arthur Morris to the rescue, on his blog Birdsasart, he just gave a video tutorial on adding space that was dynamite for me, you can see his video at: http://www.birdsasart-blog.com/2013/01/01/free-photoshop-tutorial-video-i-how-did-that/ . Thanks Artie, In short I also used the detail extractor from Color Effex Pro 4 and used a layer mask to add the details only to the bird. the top image is right out of the camera (raw) and the second is after processing. til Tomorrow MJ
Back From the Edge
Friends, I feel a little sassy and assertive this morning, back from the depths of a head cold that dumped me in my bed for three days, back from the edge of darkness. The face of this broad winged hawk woke me this morning and started giving me a pep talk, something about rising and shining. Well i will rise but the shining will have to wait until i have my fourth cup of coffee, so far only two. This hawk face needed something, so i started working with a new ( to me) piece of software, Color Effex Pro 4. I added some detail extractor and tonal contrast to liven up this image. I would highly recommend the detail extractor for raw images as it can sharpen without adding the outside ghosts that photoshop seems to excel at. While this added some noise to the background (sharpens noise) I could have easily edited that with a layer mask, but later. til Tomorrow MJ
Circle of Ice
Friends, life goes around and comes around to the beginning, again and again, the circle of life like these rocks on the ice. Not sure how they got in this formation, but I thought on New years it was an appropriate symbol for making resolutions, Reminds me of the fish traps on a nearby river built by the native Americans, they flooded the traps, caught the fish and drained the traps and started the cycle over again. I feel that there is a more profound message in this image, but with this headcold, my brain won’t function. til Tomorrow MJ
MJ Springett 