After reviewing the Great Gray Owl shots Deb & I were able to capture in Ottawa a couple of weeks ago, I found a few more that were perhaps nice enough to post.
Although the Great Gray Owl is exceeded in weight by a number of other owls, its large head and long tail help it to be the largest and tallest Owl known in the world. Female adults are almost three feet in length with a wing span of five feet. The average female weighs three pounds although Great Grays have been found as heavy as four pounds.
With their wings outstretched you get a glimpse of just how large these owls are.
In order to become a better photographer, one has to become their own best, or worst, critic as well as being open to critique from others. It’s the only way we can learn to improve our skills, not only in terms of camera settings and technique but how to think about what a shot is going to look like even before you take it. Although taking pictures of wild birds and animals is difficult and quite spontaneous, you can always make sure you position yourself so the lighting is optimized and many of the elements in the frame (i.e., perch and back ground) are such that they enhance, as oppose to detract from, the resulting image. So lets critique the above image (feel free to leave a comment if you wish); for me technically the face is too soft (a nice way of saying out of focus) and compositionally the perch obstructs and casts a shadow on the owl and the back ground is too close to the bird causing the birds to be ‘lost’ in the back ground. Otherwise, I like the wing position and it’s always a treat to be so close to a Great Gray Owl.
Regarding technique, the soft face was simply because I missed focusing on the eye. The depth of field for this image was about 2m, unfortunately that 2m started just behind the owls face! In order to minimize the compositional challenges in this shot, I reduced the saturation of the back ground about thirty percent using Viveza 2, a NIK Software plug-in for Photoshop as well as using Color Efex Pro 4 to adjust the contrast and colour of the owl. Finally a vignette was added to darken the back ground (using a solid color layer in Photoshop). These were done to try to get some separation between the bird and its background. Another option would have been to blur the back ground, however I chose not to do so as it would have produced an un-natural ‘Photoshopped’ look. Sounds ironic, but virtually all digital images are processed (often heavily) yet the goal is to have a Photoshopped image that doesn’t look Photoshopped!
This next image is included simply for our discussion on critique and as an example of a common occurrence in wildlife photography……what could have been a ‘keeper’ but is ruined by an uncontrolled factor, in this case the owl flew into a deep shadow.
A lot of time was spent in post processing trying to get some detail out of the shadows and add enough contrast, colour and saturation to make the image ‘acceptable’ however it still doesn’t quite work as a great image. In this image the canvas was increased significantly, the back ground cleaned up a dark gradient added to the top half of the frame. We need to learn that its important to take great measures to get the shot right in the camera because no amount of time and skill in post processing can turn an average image into a good one. Photoshop doesn’t rescue anything from the recycle bin, yet we often spend way too much valuable time trying!
This last shot is simply out of the camera with no processing other than cropping and an automated Photoshop action preparing it for posting on the web.
It’s a really busy back ground and won’t end up in a frame anywhere but it does capture the majestic wingspan of a Great Gray Owl and for some reason, purely subjective, I just like it….and that’s the beauty of photography….always strive to get better in every detail, whether it be technical or compositional, but in the end all that really matters is that you simply enjoy the picture!
The three images above were all taken with a Canon 1D Mk III and EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS lens in -17°C temperatures!
Orlando Wetland Park is located about forty-five minutes east of Orlando in Christmas, Florida. It’s a wonderful spot to walk and observe the diverse fauna and flora typical of Florida wetland habitat. While Deb and I wandered around the wetlands, quite lost in the vast expanse of the park, we met Josh and his family, who were serious herpetologists. They taught us a whole new way to observe wetlands, concentrating on the snakes and reptiles of the area as opposed to the birds we normally focus on. There is a whole new world out there, one that we will pay more attention to next time in the wetlands and I probably won’t wander as close to the water’s edge to get that low angle on a shore bird without also looking for fangs and rattles.
Pygmy Rattlesnake, a small rattler that is rather reclusive however we were told not to confuse its small size with its ability to really cause some grief if it sunk its fangs into your leg. Apparently, although rarely fatal in adults, a bite would cause a couple of days of severe pain regardless of treatment.
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The Water Moccasin is a pit viper that is also found in Florida. Much larger than the Pygmy Rattler and although rarely aggressive towards humans does posses a potentially fatal bite. The Water Moccasin is the world’s only semiaquatic viper. The following image was taken at the Viera Wetlands, about thirty miles south-east of the Orlando Wetland Park.
The Orlando Wetlands Park is also known for the large Garpike that inhabit some of its ponds. The gar has a body shape not unlike our Northern Pike, however their broad, teeth lined mouths give the Garpike a very distinctive look.
It’s almost impossible not to see alligators while walking around in Florida wetlands, however it is unusual to see new-born alligators as we did this year. We counted eight little gators, that Josh explained to us were probably only a day old and enjoyed watching them swimming around under the watchful eye of their mother who was lurking close by in the reeds. The young alligators were about ten inches long and almost cute….well maybe that’s an exaggeration.
Someday they will look like this.
In keeping with the wildlife theme of this post, here are a couple of shots taken in Algonquin Park just before we headed to Florida for March break. This Red Fox was very friendly, infact as soon as I squatted down to get a low angle for these shots the fox came right up to the end of my lens, presumably looking for a handout.
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Other sample of wildlife can be seen in the gallery
Sitting by the pool at our timeshare in Kissimmee, Florida with an iPad and playing with the Snapseed app that I’ve been referring to in the last few blog posts. I can’t recommend this app more highly and though it does cost $4.99 from the app store it is well worth the investment. Typically I use the app to fine tune images that by iPhone camera standards are already pretty good to start with. It has been my experience that post processing images does not often take poor images and make them acceptable but rather makes already good shots even better. Post processing rarely saves an image from the round file. That said I’ve been looking for an image that will take the post processing ability of an app to the limit, just to see what it’s capable of. I think this image fits the bill so before deleting it, it became a good test for Snapseed.
This shot is a challenge even with the best of gear. Normally you would expose for the dark water in the bottom of the image and use (in this case) at least a three stop hard edged ND Grad filter above the water line. With the iPhone 4S camera that is not possible so to take this image I focused over the hippo’s head with the focus point (which is also the metering point) half above and half below the water. The result creates severely blown highlights above the water and very underexposed shadows below the water, but at least there is some detail above and below the water line.
So, here is the original image as taken, clearly a ‘delete only’ capture.
Now, what could Snapseed do with this image? Although I have the app installed on both my phone and iPad, this image was processed on the iPad but could have easily been done directly from the phone. The time to process this image was about five minutes which is one of the advantages of Snapseed, it is very user friendly yet powerful in its scope.
Although this post is not intended as a Snapseed tutorial, in short this is how the shot was processed; water line leveled, image cropped, three different selections above the water level to reduce the blown highlights as much as possible, increase the contrast, adjust the saturation and white balance; one selection below the water line to brighten the water as much as possible, alter the contrast and tweak the white balance. The entire image was then adjusted for ambiance and structure. As is always the case, brightening shadows brings out the noise, which is very evident in the processed image. To date Snapseed has no way of noise reduction but hopefully that will come via way of a future update (NIK software has a fantastic NR program called Define which I use all the time as a CS 5 plug in, so hopefully it will show up some day in Snapseed). As a result of the noise, this image was not sharpened.
So here is the processed image. Still not a ‘keeper’ but a good example of what Snapseed can do when pushed well beyond what is normally necessary. It was a great image to play with and it’s not often you get the opportunity to photograph a hippo under water!
This image was taken in Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park.
While wandering around the Viera Wetlands in March of this year, we found something new photograph, a Water Moccasin. It was a pleasure to see this snake, which was surprisingly large at about four feet in length or perhaps even a bit longer. Deb remained in the car for safety while I got down on the road to get a nice low angle from which to take photographs. It was necessary to move a couple of times as the snake came within the minimum focus distance of the 500mm lens I was using at the time.
It was only after talking with some other people who wandered by that I found out the identity of the snake and also that Water Moccasins were actually pit vipers and venomous. After doing some research I found that Water Moccasins primarily feed on amphibians, other snakes, fish, small mammals and even birds, all of which are found in abundance at the Viera Wetlands. Predators of the Water Moccasin include Snapping Turtles, large wading birds such as Cranes, Herons and Egrets, as well as Eagles, Owls, and Alligators. Many of which are also found at Viera.
Although this was the first time I’d ever seen a large snake at Viera, I guess they occupy an important part of the local ecosystem. I will certainly be more careful the next time I lay down on the embankments in an attempt to get that perfect bird shot!
Virtually everyone these days seems to have an iPhone in their pocket, or perhaps some lesser smartphone like a Black Berry or Android. Actually this statement isn’t too far from the truth as I read this week that it is predicted that there will be 30,000,000 cell phones activated in Canada by 2013 and that the market penetration of smartphones will increase to 50% by that time (from 32% in 2010). So it seems that soon everyone in Canada will have a cell phone and half of them will be smartphones.
The versatility of smartphones is amazing and they can even be used effectively in nature photography. The camera phones are sporting processors with 5-7 megapixels which rival those of professional DSLR bodies of only a decade ago (I know…. that’s like comparing apples & oranges however the point is image quality is great in today’s smartphones).
So next time you are out for a trail walk, take your iPhone and have fun with it. Talking pictures is far more enjoyable than catching up on your email. Take some bird seed and it wont be long before the chickadees will find you. Put you camera on your wrist, some seeds in your hand and practice your timing to take the picture. The camera phones can focus to very short distances so just snap away.
The technique resulted in this image, taken at Halls Road in Ajax.
Don’t forget to have your camera phone ready when you see the big animals as well, however when you take ‘full frame’ shots of a Moose with your iPhone you are probably too close to the moose. This image was taken on the Mizzy Lake Trail in Algonquin Park.
Taking videos with smartphones is also a lot of fun and certainly helps capture the memories of the day. Here is a friend of mine providing the most expensive perch I’ve ever seen used for taking pictures of Chickadees with an iPhone 🙂
Yesterday morning provided the opportunity to photograph three new bird species; the Pileated Woodpecker, Common Redpoll and Evening Grosbeak. If all goes well they will be posted on the website in the next couple of days. If you want to read new blog posts as soon as they are posted please click the Orange RSS feed button on the top right side of this post. You can then have my blog sent to your Google Homepage, Google Reader or any number of other subscription readers that you prefer.
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