GVP #51 - Great Blue Heron at Blackwater Refuge

From http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2010/06/gvp-51-great-blue-heron-at-blackwater.html.

This Great Blue Heron at Blackwater Refuge caught this big fish, and was cooperative and let me watch him at work.



This guy was located along the Wildlife Drive at the start of the 3rd/last section. There is a spot where water drains out of the embankment area there, and heron will wait patiently for fish to come through it. This morning I drove up to the spot, hoping a bird would be there.
-click for more-

To pull off an encounter like this at Blackwater the trick is to move slowly and NOT get out of the car. The heron was aware of my presence for sure, and I just managed to stay on the side of not bothering him. I watched for about 20 minutes right at sunrise. Earlier he caught a much smaller fish and gulped it down quickly. Then a short time later he got this large fish. He brought it to land and tried to kill it by poking at it while it was on the rocks. That process took more than 5 minutes. Then it spent another couple of minutes getting the fish in to position to attempt to swallow it. All the while I took lots of images, and made every attempt to not get excited or move too quickly - and scare him away. It worked out pretty well and the heron was comfortable enough to work on his meal right in front of me from start to end. The above photo was towards that end, and he seemed to almost face me show off his prize, it was cool.

Here is a photo from right after the catch where the fish was still kicking. The slow shutter speed shows some of the fight - since the sun was not over the horizon and trees enough to provide proper lighting.



I go to Blackwater Refuge often, and almost every visit begins around sunrise for me. I've never been disappointed with a visit, and would recommend an early-in-the-day visit to all...

Original content posted at http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/

Nikographer.com / Jon

GBH and MD Osprey - GVP #14 #15

From http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/gbh-and-md-osprey-gvp-14-15.html

10 days in and about 15 vertical shots posted so far...




I've been shooting vertically more for sure. Yesterday I went to shoot some birds and actually tried some in flight shots vertically! It was weird and a little awkward, but it was good.




Vertical flight shots worked best for the part of their flight where they'd bank in front of me to the left or right.

Focus
Keeping the manual focus ring locked down seems to avoid the problem where the camera stops trying to auto-focus if it moves.

Last night I experimented with intentionally setting the focus fine tune to -6. Very often I've shot an osprey for example and gotten the wings in focus and the head (which is slightly closer to the camera) is not in focus. The test seemed to work, and I will try again with something like -10 or -12. Flight shots with the subject closing in on the camera seem to be when this problem happens most.

I hedged my bet and shot with that setting for only a portion of my time out. The results seem to indicate it helped. My only fear for this is I will forget I had it set and then shoot something not moving and my focus will all be off slightly.

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Original content posted at http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/

Nikographer.com / Jon

Going Vertical #2

at http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/going-vertical-2.html



I've decided my project is going to be to shoot and post vertical shots for a good while.

Flickr really like horizontal images, or square images. Vertical images are not as popular, although I did recently come across someone's flickr stream that was almost completely vertically composed images.

Flickr's Explorer is almost always non-vertical shots, the non-vertical shots just work better for computer screens and the site's layout.

At a recent photoclub meeting the presenter had many panoramic shots taken with a panoramic camera. Most times you'd think of a pano you'd think horizontal, right? Well this person also had some vertical panos, like 1 foot wide by 6 feet tall. It's such an odd thing that it struck me. He's a pro and said that they sell well the tall narrow shots because they can fit in to place where wall space is very limited. And wow, yeah, that makes such great sense.

I'm going to try a few vertical panos if the subject looks right for it.

Here's another vertical shot, that I posted a while back, a rare thing...



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Original content posted at http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/

Nikographer.com / Jon

Great Falls National Park Spring 2010

From http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/2010/04/great-falls-national-park-spring-2010.html.

The River's water levels are coming down, and the herons are fishing in the main falls some. Over the last week I saw Great Blue Herons flying around with nesting material, as well as competing for spots to fish from.



There's a rookery up river that is pretty active, and an eagle's nest too. The eagle appear to now have a chick. I didn't follow the exact dates, but the chick might be 2 weeks old now.

I forgot and now remembered some of why I like Great Falls so much. The herons and water are such great attractions, and not having to drive a hundred miles (bombay hook refuge, blackwater refuge) is a nice change of pace.

While there I also saw a couple bluebirds, as well as many vultures (turkey and black). There was also a Red-Tailed Hawk with some crows dogging it on more than one occasion over the main falls.

I highly recommend folks visit Great Falls National Park. Bring a tripod and a short and long lenses.




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Original content posted at http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/

Nikographer.com / Jon

Great Blue Heron Video

I just figured out why previous videos weren't filling the frame when I did the edit (adding images auto selected 4:3 aspect ratio even when video was 16:9, and then when the two were mixed neither filled the frame.).... Edit done in Windows Movie Maker, captured with D300s.

I tried to change the aspect ratio on an existing Movie Maker project's images and it hung the app. So, the below video is a re-do on a movie I was trying to make. It actually took me a few tries to make a project from scratch that behaved correctly, in the end I made a new project, changed the image aspect ratio without any files or clips added, saved that, then closed MM and opened my project fresh and it worked.

One of the things mentioned in a recent This Week in Photography podcast episode was when shooting video not to pan around and chase the action like you might for still images. But instead setup the video camera and let the action happen inside the frame.

For this footage that's just what I'd done, setup the camera and let stuff happen without moving around.



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-Jon

Make photos pop - selective sharpening

I've done a little guide already once showing off selective sharpening, here's another good example.



read on for more details



The background has a nice blur to it, but the bird needed to be sharpened.

here's the starting image with level adjustments already



And here is a layer with just the bird sharpened and everything else masked out



Then the lower layer is added back (to being visible) and you get the selectively sharpened image...

Visiting My Great Blue Heron

I've been visiting "my" GBH a couple times a week again for a couple weeks in a row, and he hasn't disappointed.



read more...


He's mostly got the pond to himself.



The lower sun angles of fall is nice as is the color of the foliage in the reflections / water...

Unlike many birds that freak at the first sight of a human, this one can be "friendly" and not bothered by people passing by or even directly interested in him.



When I visited him last night he was near his little island, and then flew around here and there, and then I approached him and he was hunting and let me get to around 10 or 15 feet.



This is the same heron that I've been checking on since August! He's the BEST!



-J