Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART

Jet Lag Update

Again following the melatonin protocol that I described yesterday, I had another 8+ hours of great sleep with only one pit stop. I was remiss in not mentioning that after meeting Cliff Oliver on a Bosque IPT probably 18 years ago he helped me get on a new path and begin taking care of my health. Without his guidance I would surely be resting in a rotting wooden box somewhere. Of that I have no doubt as I had been doing a great of killing myself with food for more than four decades. Learn more about my San Diego health guru Dr. Cliff Oliver by clicking here. Or like Cliff on Facebook and learn a ton about Wellness here.

The Streak

This post marks 99 straight days with a new blog post, a record by far that should be extended for at least another day or so, or not. Or more…. To show your appreciation for my efforts here, we ask that use our B&H and Amazon affiliate links for all of your B&H and Amazon purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the BIRDS AS ART Online Store. We sell only what I use and depend on. We will not sell you junk. We know what you need to make creating great images easy and fun. And we are always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

You can find the following items in the store: Gitzo tripods, Mongoose M3.6 and Wimberley heads, plates, low feet, and accessories, flash brackets, , Delkin e-film Pro Compact Flash Cards, LensCoat products, and our unique line-up of educational materials including ABP I & II, Digital Basics, Site and Set-up e-Guides, Canon and Nikon Camera Users and AF e-Guides, and MP-4 Photoshop video tutorials among others.

We would of course appreciate you using our B&H and Amazon affiliate links for all of your B&H and Amazon major gear, video, electronic, household, and personal purchases. For the photographic stuff mentioned in the paragraph above we would of course greatly appreciate your business. Here is a huge thank you to the many who have been using our links on a regular basis and visiting the BAA Online store as well.

This blog post took about 2 1/2 hours to prepare. Enjoy and learn.

This image was created at Itoh on the Japan in Winter IPT with the hand held Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Lens with Internal 1.4x Extender (at 560mm with the Internal TC in place) and the Canon EOS-1D X. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2 1/3 stops off the snow: 1/1250 sec. at f/5.6 in Manual mode. Color temperature: AWB. Central Sensor/AI Servo-Surround/Rear Focus AF on the top of the bird’s right thigh active at the moment of exposure; there is no way to tell whether or not the active sensor above the central sensor caught the end of the bird’s bill, but no worries, the image is very sharp on the head. Click here to see the latest version of the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version.

What to Do?

You traveled all the way to Japan. You are in the right place at the right time with the wind behind you, blowing snow, and soft light. You are tracking an incoming crane and as the bird starts to land it beings to display. You are hoping that the bird lands clean, but as you press the shutter button you see that that is not to be. When you view the image on your laptop, you note that the image is not level, that it is slightly underexposed, and that parts of three other cranes are merged with the subject. All in all a pretty much worst case situation…. But, the display is gorgeous and the image is sharp.

What to do? Do you delete the image and move on?

This, the optimized version, was created from the original image above in Photoshop after the RAW conversion was done in DPP.

The Image Optimization

What to do? Get to work.

Lighten the image during the RAW conversion in DPP. Open it in Photoshop. Level and crop it. Fill in the long skinny triangle left along the upper right frame edge with the Clone Stamp Tool working small and being careful to avoid obvious repeats. (I tried the John Heado Content Aware Fill method but the filled in area lacked texture so I went to the Clone Stamp.) Eliminate the visible parts of the two cranes directly behind the subject using Denise Ippolito’s great Protect and Defend Cloning with Layers technique that is described on page 92 of Digital Basics. Again, be sure to work small and strive to avoid obvious repeats. Avoiding all snow flake pattern repeats is impossible. Those that are noted can be dealt with with the Spot Healing Brush (J). Get rid of the head of the larger crane on the right by again using Denise Ippolito’s Protect and Defend Cloning with Layers technique Cover the body with several Quick Masks that and fine-tune them with Regular Layer Masks. Clean up the snow/woods demarcation line with a 40% Clone Stamp Tool.

Make the image pop with a Levels Adjustment on its own Layer as described in detail in the “Keep It” blog post here. Sharpen, lighten, and brighten the colors of the head, face, and the black on the neck after selecting those areas carefully with the Quick Selection Tool. (Sharpen with a Contrast Mask, lighten via Control M–Curves on a Layer, and brighten the colors with a Vibrance Adjustment.) Lastly eliminate the slight BLUE cast in the snow with a Hue/Saturation on a layer adjustment (Control U) of the BLUE channel only (by moving the BLUE saturation slider to -100. Save and named. Create your JPEG.

The image optimization probably took close to one hour. Was it worth it?

Truth in Captioning

Whenever I do anything more than minimal clean-up I believe in captioning the images appropriately; here is the caption for this image: Red-crowned Crane landing display–parts of 3 cranes removed _Y5O7632 Hokkaido, Japan.tif. This image could not be entered in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition as they allow only “minor clean-up.” It could, however, be entered in the BIRDS AS ART International Bird Photography Competition. Judging of this year’s contest is currently underway.

Digital Basics

Are you tired of making your images look worse in Photoshop? Do you have no clue as to how I optimized the image above? Everything above plus tons more is detailed in my Digital Basics, an instructional PDF that is sent via e-mail. It includes my complete digital workflow, dozens of great Photoshop tips, the use of Contrast Masks, several different ways of expanding canvas, all of my time-saving Keyboard Shortcuts, Quick Masking, Layer Masking, and NIK Color Efex Pro basics, my killer image clean-up techniques, Digital Eye Doctor, creating time-saving actions, and lots more.

APTATS I & II

Learn the details of advanced Quick Masking techniques in APTATS I. Mention this blog post and apply a $5 discount with phone orders only. Learn advanced Layer Masking Techniques in APTATS II. Mention this blog post and apply a $5 discount with phone orders only. Buy the pair, APTATS I and APTATS II and we will be glad to apply at $15 discount with phone orders only.

The DPP RAW Conversion Guide

After seeing the accurate colors that I get from my DPP RAW conversions, Japan in Winter co-leader Paul McKenzie is switching to DPP conversions and Denise Ippolito is considering doing the same. Now that is amazing…. To learn why I use Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP) to convert every image that I work on, click here.

IPT Info

Many of our great trips are filling up. With 5 Canadians and another couple recently signing up for our 4-DAY Bosque IPT, that workshop is filling up quickly. See also the info on the South Florida and Nickerson Beach IPTs. Two great leaders on most trips ensure that you will receive individual attention, have all of your questions answered, and learn a ton including how to think like a pro, see the situation, read the light and the wind direction, and get the right exposure every time. In addition you will have fun, and make lots of great images. Click here for IPT details and general information.

If you’d like to learn from the two folks who created the images in the composite above do consider one of the trips below. Denise Ippolito’s images: Japanese leaf painting, skimmer in flight, curved Keukenhof paths with tulips, copulating terns, & pink dahlia. Artie’s images: Snow Geese snowstorm blur, crane landing silhouettes, Leopard with prey in tree, King Penguin, & vertical tulip.

A Creative Adventure/BIRDS AS ART Instructional Photo-Tours (IPTs)/Two great leaders: Arthur Morris & Denise Ippolito.

Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART www.BIRDSASART-blog.com for the latest images, info, & education
Denise Ippolito/A Creative Adventure www.deniseippolito.com: get yourself out of the box!

Denise’s e-books: Bloomin’ Ideas, A Guide to Filters & Effects, The Softer Side of Macro, & more. Free Monthly Creative MiniMag: www.deniseippolito.com/magazine

Holland 2014 7 1/2-Day/8-Night: A Creative Adventure/BIRDS AS ART/Tulips & A Touch of Holland IPT. April 17-April 24, 2014: $4995 Limit: 12/Openings: 5

We still have room for 5 more flower photographers on this great trip.

Join Denise Ippolito, Flower Queen and the author of “Bloomin’ Ideas,” and Arthur Morris, Canon Explorer of Light Emeritus and one of the planet’s premier photographic educators for a great trip to Holland in mid-April 2014. Day 1 of the IPT will be April 17, 2014. We will have a short afternoon get-together and then our first photographic session at the justly-famed Keukenhof. Most days we will return to the hotel for lunch, image sharing and a break. On Day 8, April 24, we will enjoy both morning and afternoon photography sessions.

The primary subjects will be tulips and orchids at Keukenhof and the spectacularly amazing tulip, hyacinth, and daffodil bulb fields around Lisse. In addition we will spend one full day in Amsterdam. There will be optional visits the Van Gogh Museum in the morning and the Anne Frank House in the afternoon; there will be plenty of time for street photography as well. And some great food. On another day we will have a wonderful early dinner at Kinderdijk and then head out with our gear to photograph the windmills and possibly some birds for those who bring their longs lenses. We will spend an afternoon in the lovely Dutch town of Edam where we will do some street photography and enjoy a superb dinner. All lodging, ground transportation, entry fees, and meals (from dinner on Day 1 through dinner on Day 7) are included. For those who will be bringing a big lens we will likely have an optional bird photography afternoon or two.

Click here for additional info or to register.

Nickerson Baby Beach-nesting Birds IPT, Long Island, NY: 3-Full Days/July 22-24, 2014: $1199.

Black Skimmers, Common Terns with chicks, American Oystercatcher & Piping Plover families; breeding behaviors including courtship feeding, display flight and combat, and copulations. Gulls and shorebirds.

UK Puffins IPT. Early July, 2014.

Details TBA. Please e-mail to be placed on the interested list.

Tanzania Serengeti Summer Safari: Leave US: August 9—return: August 24, 2014: $12,999.

Co-leaders: Arthur Morris & Todd Gustafson. Wildebeest/The Great Migration, cats, elephant, giraffe, zebra, birds & more. Please e-mail for brochure.

Swan Island Dahlia Farm IPT, Canby, OR, September 8-12, 2014: 5 FULL DAYS: $1699.

Leader: Denise Ippolito. 40 acres with 350+dazzling varieties of dahlias in a plethora of colors, shapes and sizes. Sharpen your technical skills and boost your creative juices. Daily assignments, image sharing, and Photoshop sessions.

Bosque del Apache 2014 A Creative Adventure/BIRDS AS ART “Creative Photography Instructional Photo-Tour.” (IPT). NOV 24-25, 2014. 2-FULL DAYS: $729.

Leaders: Denise Ippolito & Arthur Morris. Introductory Slide program: 7:00pm on Sunday 11/23. This IPT is perfect for folks who want to learn to think outside the box, to create new and different images. Learn to unleash your creative juices at the wondrous Bosque del Apache, NWR in San Antonio, NM.

Bosque del Apache 2014 BIRDS AS ART/A Creative Adventure Instructional Photo-Tour (IPT). NOV 29-DEC 3, 2014. Totaling 4 FULL-DAYS: $1449

Leaders: Arthur Morris and Denise Ippolito. Introductory Slide program: 7:00pm on Sunday 11/29. Tens of thousand of Snow Geese, 10,000 Sandhill Cranes, ducks, amazing sunrises, sunsets, and blast-offs. Live, eat, and breathe photography with two of the world’s premier photographic educators at one of their very favorite photography locations on the planet.

Antarctica/The Extended Expedition Voyage: Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia and Falkland Islands: December 13, 2014 to January 10, 2015.

Please e-mail for details.

BAA offers a wide range of books, e-Guides, and educational materials and photographic accessories at the lowest prices around—25+ years of experience, and the best advice you can get. We will not sell you junk. Access the BAA Store here or call us at 1-863-692-0906.

Questions? Please e-mail us at birdsasart@verizon.net or photographybydenise221@gmail.com.

Support the BAA Blog. Support the BAA Bulletins: Shop B&H here!

We want and need to keep providing you with the latest free information, photography and Photoshop lessons, and all manner of related information. Show your appreciation by making your purchases immediately after clicking on any of our B&H or Amazon Affiliate links in this blog post. Remember, B&H ain’t just photography!

Amazon

Everyone buys something from Amazon, be it a big lens or deodorant. Support the blog by starting your search by clicking on the logo-link below. No purchase is too small to be appreciated; they all add up. Why make it a habit? Because I make it a habit of bringing you new images and information on an almost daily basis.

Typos

In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos, wrong words, misspellings, omissions, or grammatical errors. Just be right.

This trio of sea eagles, two Steller’s and one White-tailed, was photographed on the very early morning of February 21, 2014 at 6:36am on the Japan in Winter IPT with the Gitzo 3532 LS carbon fiber tripod, the Mongoose M3.6 head, the Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Lens with Internal 1.4x Extender (at 388mm with the Internal TC in place) and the Canon EOS-1D X. ISO 1600 was somewhat of an error for this static image…. Evaluative metering +1 1/3 stops off the ice: 1/1000 sec. at f/5.6 in Manual mode. Color temperature: AWB. Two sensors to the right of the central Sensor/AI Servo-Surround/Rear Focus AF on the upper breast of the right-hand bird active at the moment of exposure. Click here to see the latest version of the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version. Being able to quickly and accurately move the AF sensors around the array is a skill that all need to master. Learn how in one of our camera User’s Guides.

Jet Lag with a Vengeance…

Getting to distant lands rife with great birds in great settings like the sea eagle trio above is one of the big benefits of being a professional nature photographer. In addition to the airfare,however, there is often a big price to pay that comes with long international flights. Jet lag. Yesterday, I thought that I would be fine. I woke at 6:30am, took a short nap in the afternoon, and had lots of energy throughout the day. It was rather strange. Things got even stranger as the evening grew deeper. I turned off the laptop at about 11:30pm but still was feeling strong. So I watched some more of the Winter Olympics on TIVO and followed that up with a complete episode of a PBA (Professional Bowler’s Association) league event. I bowled a lot when I was a young teen. Don’t ask me what got into me….

I finally got into bed at 1:30am confident that I would sleep a good 7 hours at least. Wrong. I woke at 4:00am feeling wide awake. I tried to get back to sleep by concentrating on my breath as I usually do. That failed. So I flipped on the light and grabbed the book that I have been loving, Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans I read. And I read. And I read some more. Never once did the book hit me in the head.

140 pages later, at 6:00am, I finished the book. The type was small. I got up, had breakfast–it’s good to be eating properly again, answered various e-mails, and began work on this blog post at about 8:00am. It is now 9:35; with only 2 1/2 hours sleep, I am yawning and exhausted. When I finish this post at about ten I will take what I hope will be the day’s only short nap and then take a swim.

The Image Optimization

After converting the image in DPP the first thing that I did in Photoshop was a rather elaborate (for me) Curves Adjustment, pinning the curve in several spots, darkening the dark and darkening the blue sky while maintaining the tonality of the WHITEs. I further blackened the BLACKs (+2) and the MIDTONEs (+2) with my Selective Color Action. Then I duplicated the whole image, ran a 100% Linear Burn on that layer, and painted it in at 15% on the highlights as needed. I ran a 15/65/0 contrast mask on the bird’s heads and bills to sharpen them and then ran a second contrast mask using a Quick Mask on the head of the white-tailed as that bird was slightly beyond the depth-of-field. I cleaned up a few dust spots and ran Filter/Blur/Surface Blur at 2/4 on the whole image to clean up the noise. The whole thing took well less than 10 minutes.

Digital Basics

Are you tired of making your images look worse in Photoshop? Everything above plus tons more is detailed in my Digital Basics, an instructional PDF that is sent via e-mail. It includes my complete digital workflow, dozens of great Photoshop tips, the use of Contrast Masks, several different ways of expanding canvas, all of my time-saving Keyboard Shortcuts, Quick Masking, Layer Masking, and NIK Color Efex Pro basics, my killer image clean-up techniques, Digital Eye Doctor, creating time-saving actions, and lots more.

APTATS I & II

Learn the details of advanced Quick Masking techniques in APTATS I. Mention this blog post and apply a $5 discount with phone orders only. Learn advanced Layer Masking Techniques in APTATS II. Mention this blog post and apply a $5 discount with phone orders only. by the pair, APTATS I and APTATS II and we will be glad to apply at $15 discount with phone orders only.

The DPP RAW Conversion Guide

After seeing the accurate colors that I get from my DPP RAW conversions, Japan in Winter co-leader Paul McKenzie is switching to DPP conversions and Denise Ippolito is considering doing the same. Now that is amazing…. To learn why I use Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP) to convert every image that I work on, click here.

The Streak

This post marks 97 straight days with a new blog post, a record by far that should be extended for at least another day or so, or not. Or more…. To show your appreciation for my efforts here, we ask that use our B&H and Amazon affiliate links for all of your B&H and Amazon purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the BIRDS AS ART Online Store. We sell only what I use and depend on. We will not sell you junk. We know what you need to make creating great images easy and fun. And we are always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

You can find the following items in the store: Gitzo tripods, Mongoose M3.6 and Wimberley heads, plates, low feet, and accessories, flash brackets, , Delkin e-film Pro Compact Flash Cards, LensCoat products, and our unique line-up of educational materials including ABP I & II, Digital Basics, Site and Set-up e-Guides, Canon and Nikon Camera Users and AF e-Guides, and MP-4 Photoshop video tutorials among others.

We would of course appreciate you using our B&H and Amazon affiliate links for all of your B&H and Amazon major gear, video, electronic, household, and personal purchases. For the photographic stuff mentioned in the paragraph above we would of course greatly appreciate your business. Here is a huge thank you to the many who have been using our links on a regular basis and visiting the BAA Online store as well.

This blog post took about 2 hours to prepare. Enjoy.

IPT Info

Many of our great trips are filling up. With 5 Canadians signing up for our 4-DAY Bosque IPT, that workshop is filling up quickly. See especially info on the South Florida, Holland, and Nickerson Beach IPTs. Two great leaders on most trips ensure that you will receive individual attention, have all of your questions answered, and learn a ton including how to think like a pro, see the situation, and get the right exposure every time. In addition you will have fun, and make lots of great images. Click here for IPT details and general information.

Images copyright 2012: Denise Ippolito & Arthur Morris. Card design by Denise Ippolito. Click on the image to enjoy a spectacular larger version.

Holland 2014 7 1/2-Day/8-Night: A Creative Adventure/BIRDS AS ART/Tulips & A Touch of Holland IPT. April 17-April 24, 2014: $4995 Limit: 12/Openings: 5

We still have room for 5 more flower photographers on this great trip.

Join Denise Ippolito, Flower Queen and the author of “Bloomin’ Ideas,” and Arthur Morris, Canon Explorer of Light Emeritus and one of the planet’s premier photographic educators for a great trip to Holland in mid-April 2014. Day 1 of the IPT will be April 17, 2014. We will have a short afternoon get-together and then our first photographic session at the justly-famed Keukenhof. Most days we will return to the hotel for lunch, image sharing and a break. On Day 8, April 24, we will enjoy both morning and afternoon photography sessions.

The primary subjects will be tulips and orchids at Keukenhof and the spectacularly amazing tulip, hyacinth, and daffodil bulb fields around Lisse. In addition we will spend one full day in Amsterdam. There will be optional visits the Van Gogh Museum in the morning and the Anne Frank House in the afternoon; there will be plenty of time for street photography as well. And some great food. On another day we will have a wonderful early dinner at Kinderdijk and then head out with our gear to photograph the windmills and possibly some birds for those who bring their longs lenses. We will spend an afternoon in the lovely Dutch town of Edam where we will do some street photography and enjoy a superb dinner. All lodging, ground transportation, entry fees, and meals (from dinner on Day 1 through dinner on Day 7) are included. For those who will be bringing a big lens we will likely have an optional bird photography afternoon or two.

Click here for additional info or to register.

Join me for the 2014 Tanzania Summer Safari!

2014 Tanzania Summer Safari, 14-day African Adventure/leave the US on August 9. Fly home on August 24: $12,999.

Co-leaders Todd Gustafson & Arthur Morris. The limit is 12. Three photographers/van; you get your own row of seats. Our trip is a bit more expensive than the average safari for good reason. It is the best. We have the best driver guides with a total of decades of experience. They have been trained over the years by Todd and by me to drive with photography in mind. We have the best and most knowledgeable leaders. We stay in the best lodges and camps. We hope that you will join us for what will be Todd’s 35th African safari, and my 8th.

If you are seriously interested please e-mail me; I will be glad to send you the illustrated PDF with the complete itinerary and deposit info.

What else makes this expedition unique?

•Pre-trip consultation and camera equipment advice
•Award-winning photographers as your guides
•A seamless itinerary visiting the right locations at the best time of year
•Hands-on photography instruction in the field
•Specially designed three roof-hatch photo safari vehicles
•Proprietary materials for preparation, including free copy of “A Photographer’s Guide to Photographing in East Africa.”
•Post-safari image critiques

All-inclusive (double-occupancy) except for your flights to and from Kilamajaro Airport, bar drinks, soda & water (except at the Intimate Tented Camp where everything is free for our entire stay), tips for drivers and camp staff, personal items, and trip insurance.

Breathe deeply, bite the bullet, and live life to its fullest; we all get only one ride on the merry-go-round… Join me on this great trip. Click on the image to enjoy a larger version.

The Southern Ocean…

If you would like to explore the possibility of joining me on the Cheesemans’ Ecology Safaris Antarctica/The Extended Expedition Voyage< trip: Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia and Falkland Islands: December 13, 2014 to January 10, 2015, click here for additional information and then shoot me an e-mail.

The DPP RAW Conversion Guide

To learn why I use Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP) to convert every image that I work on, click here.

Support the BAA Blog. Support the BAA Bulletins: Shop B&H here!

We want and need to keep providing you with the latest free information, photography and Photoshop lessons, and all manner of related information. Show your appreciation by making your purchases immediately after clicking on any of our B&H or Amazon Affiliate links in this blog post. Remember, B&H ain’t just photography!

Amazon

Everyone buys something from Amazon, be it a big lens or deodorant. Support the blog by starting your search by clicking on the logo-link below. No purchase is too small to be appreciated; they all add up. Why make it a habit? Because I make it a habit of bringing you new images and information on an almost daily basis.

Typos

In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos, wrong words, misspellings, omissions, or grammatical errors. Just be right.