Better and better

I'm slowly (very slowly) getting better at this nature/wildlife thing. Still lots of practice and trial n' error involved though. I'm having to force myself to not fall back to using automatic settings on the camera...I'm determined to get the hang of this.

This is today's best best picture. It took 94 shots to get 2 worth keeping...but hey, at least there were 2 this time.

I love the way he was standing in a spot that was half shaded, half sunny. It makes some interesting contrasts on the grasses around him. (her?)



It looks much better full sized, but full size is 12.6 Mb, and 6248 pixels wide; a tad large for posting.

Blue heron yes?

Very nice shot, regardless, almost looks like it's dark out with the bird spotlighted

Gorgeous! The various shades of grass do add to the image!

What kind of bird is that?

Wow, great shot!

Yup, it's a Great Blue Heron.

It is a beautiful shot!

Gorgeous, Mike!

nice shoot Mike!...

Great shot

Beautiful! There was one at the golf course last week that we saw every day at the same place. Unfortunately the little boogers will steal your koi and goldfish right out of your ponds. My BIL and SIL have a koi pond and they have had to buy a fake heron since blue herons are territorial and will not go where there is another heron already in place.

Don't you love digital cameras? I wonder how much money nature photographers spent before we had them.

Nice shot Mike!!

what the heck is wrong with me, I don't see a picture in this thread?

<edit> oh...it just took a minute to load. yes, it is terrific Mike!

It's a gray heron, no? They are little smaller then blues and well gray, not blue .

Gray Heron Gray Photo.

It looks like a juvenile too .

*putting on my photographer hat here*

It's a nice, shot, good composition. The only thing is that I would have bent down a little farther (If that was possible) to get the shot more straight-on.

You REALLY need to lighten up the image a little with photoshop. It would make a BIG difference.

It's a decent shot though . If this is some place on your property maybe consider setting up a blind so you can get nice & close?

It's adjust the aperture for next time to fade out the background a bit more, and slow down the shutter so you get more rich colours.

Wildlife photography is HARD! Photoshop is your best friend. It always hard to get everything perfect when you're dealing with an un-cooperative subject!

Originally Posted by Nes

It's a gray heron, no? They are little smaller then blues and well gray, not blue

.

Gray Heron Gray Photo.

It looks like a juvenile too

.

*putting on my photographer hat here*

It's a nice, shot, good composition. The only thing is that I would have bent down a little farther (If that was possible) to get the shot more straight-on.

You REALLY need to lighten up the image a little with photoshop. It would make a BIG difference.

It's a decent shot though

. If this is some place on your property maybe consider setting up a blind so you can get nice & close?

It's adjust the aperture for next time to fade out the background a bit more, and slow down the shutter so you get more rich colours.

Wildlife photography is HARD!

Photoshop is your best friend. It always hard to get everything perfect when you're dealing with an un-cooperative subject!

Click to expand...

We have a fellow in our office that is into photography and every picture he takes is "touched up"/"enhanced" with another program. Yes, his pictures are nice but I personally think that is cheating.

I love the photographs that are natural and not tampered with personally and I love your shot Mike.

You're right Yos, it is cheating. It's important to work on you photography skills first and your computer skills second. However, when EVERYONE is doing it is it really cheating?

Like I metioned, with wildlife sometimes you get the PERFECT shot but it's just alittle too dark or a little too light because you can't control nature .

Thank you so much everybody And, from what my mentor in Canada tells me, she is of two minds on the photo. One, she says almost exactly the same things that Nes says...but, on the other hand, she likes the spotlighting effect and the highlights against the dark fields from an "artsy" (yep, she used that word) and creative aspect.

(How I ended up with a lovely ex-model turned photograper living 4000 miles away as an online mentor is a whole 'nother story )

What I'm doing right now is pushing the limits of the cameras and my own eyesight. I'm using all manual settings, white balance, iso, focus...everything. And it IS hard. Once I feel that I know what all the gear and I are capable of, then I'll start getting deeper into what can be done post-shot.

And, I shot all the photos in RAW format, so I can photoshop every single aspect of the picture, and this one will probably be my test bed for a long time to come.

I am a tad bit disappointed in Photoshop though. Not the program, it's excellent. I'm disappointed that GIMP on my Ubuntu Linux box is almost exactly the same thing, and it was free. The only difference is the interface and the titles of certain functions. (Resize in PS is Scale in GIMP)

Ok, so I cheated on this one

I used full auto settings, because I wanted this shot, it was so cute. I was afraid I'd wake him up and only had one shot at it, so I let the camera do all the dirty work.

You know where you can stick your "rise n' shine"!

A time and a place for everything, Mike! When it's accept the convenience or lose the shot, it's a no-brainer! Lovely. Likewise the heron! He's a beaut. You're doing nice things with that camera.

Nes - unless it was imported, it's a Blue Heron. Grey Herons are not native to the continent - they're European/Russian.

Blue or Gray it's a nice bird picture. And the duck is beautiful.