Blog Archives
Peanut Butter Bird
Friends, this Gray Jay is popping pieces of frozen peanut butter like popcorn. I laughed out loud when I saw this image. This image was taken at a bird feeder station where all kinds of birdie treats were put out for the northern bog birds. The Sax Zim bog is famous for winter owls that migrate here from the northern regions and is located west of the mighty Lake Superior. The larger birds are attracted by the abundance of smaller game and the seed-eaters are attracted by the coniferous trees that produce cones filled with seed. til Tomorrow more bog birds, MJ
Immature Eagle
Friends, This immature bald eagle was trying to have a little snack on a roadkill, but i was patiently sitting across the road and he remained in this tree until i went away. smart bird, but he was still snacking a few days later when i passed again, but I had taken this image so I did not stop. The ponds and lakes are all frozen this time of year so his fishing food source is not available. Bald eagles will scavenge what food is available and an occasional deer carcass means survival. His varied feathering marks him as a juvenile bird. The bald eagle gains his all-white head and tail over a period of five years His pate is turning a white but still has a strong eye stripe and a dark bill. I am not a birding expert so I will not venture a guess at the age of this eagle. til Tomorrow MJ
Motorboat Mallards
Friends, this image did not need much in the way of photoshop and i loved the wake behind and ahead of the birds. They are swimming very fast after a fellow mallard who got some bread from people feeding the ducks. Reminds me of the saying, “be like a duck, calm on the outside and paddling like mad under the water” My father always thought that was a wise saying and as i was a wall flower when i was growing up, I took faith that the paddling would get me where I needed to go. so I am still paddling. til Tomorrow MJ
Beach Cleanup
Friends, this male Mallard was crusing along the edge of Lake Superior that in January is still not ice-covered. The mallards don’t seem to mind the icy weather. I didn’t like all the leaf debris among the ice so i deleted it with several Photoshop tools, mostly the patch and spot healing brush tools. Sharpened with Color Effex Pro 4 detail extractor tool. I think the image is wilder and the absence of debris is less distracting. To each their own, til Tomorrow MJ
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
MJ Springett 