Sharp/Soft Overlay with a Twist

This image was created from two images made with the Canon 800mm f/5.6 L IS lens. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 1/3 stops: 1/60 sec. at f/5.6. Read on for the details.

On the way to the Santa Clara ranch in Starr County, TX last week we stopped to photograph the huge sunflowers [...]

Masked Lapwing: My Choices

This is image three, the fill flash image, with a bit more color work. This is image two, full sun with lots of flash, as presented in the April 25th post, presented here for comparison.

First off, thanks all for playing. Image two and image three were the favorites of the group by [...]

One Piece at a Time

Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens with the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaulative metering +1/3 stop: 1/640 sec. at f/7.1 set manually. Fill flash at -3 stops with the better beamer.

I created the image above (yeah, I know; it’s pretty bad as is…) this morning at the Cozad Ranch in Linn, TX. [...]

The Processed Images; Which Do You Like Best?

This is the image created in full sun with no flash. Let’s call this one image one. This is the image captured in full sun with ETTL flash set at +1 stop. Let’s call this one image two. This is the image made with Fill Flash when the sun went behind a cloud. [...]

Bill Clean-up

This Willet was photographed at LaJolla, CA with the handheld Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO lens and the EOS 50D. ISO 200. Evaluative metering +1/3 stop: 1/1600 sec. at f/4 set manually.

Aside from working on the eyes of most of my avian subjects, I often spend considerable time cleaning a bird’s bill.   I [...]

Katmai Quick Mask Magic

This is the original capture: "Before"

When the mother bear placed her head above the cub, I knew that the moment would not last more than a second or two.  My urge was to move to my left to separate the gull from the bear, but if I did that, I was pretty [...]

Back to the Basics and More #3/Galapagos

This frigatebird image was created with the Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS lens (handheld at 200mm) with the Canon EOS-50D. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2/3 stop: 1/4000 sec. at f/5.6.

Deciding to keep the image above was a no-brainer.  The bird was perfectly juxtaposed to the imaging sensor.  It is diagonally oriented in the in the frame.  [...]

More Dauphin Island plus some Photoshop Tips

I should have mentioned that when we arrived we were greeted by chants of “You should have been here yesterday.”  As it turns out, Thursday–the afternoon of the day that we should have been on Dauphin Island, was a big wave day with a large fallout of neo-tropical migrants.  And we soon learned that [...]

Captain Froggie and the Alafia Banks; Near Dunking or Near Drowning?

For those having image distortion problems related to their browsers, we apologize but will be unable to deal with that problem until we are able to customize Word  Press; that will not happen for a while as I am hoping to get my taxes done on time for the first time in years.  Anyone [...]

ILE: My Home Turf (and and news of an amazing sighting...)

I wake up at my home-office at Indian Lake Estates (ILE), Florida about half of each year.   (Don’t ask me where the estates are….)    In any case, ILE consists of 450 modest homes on 4,000 acres surrounded by 17,000 protected acres on the Lake Wales Ridge.  My late masseuse, John Lynott, told me that he [...]