Tips on Pattern Images ...

What’s Up?

I will be without internet access from 8 AUG through late in the day on 22 AUG. There will be a brand new educational blog post every day in my absence. I toiled long and hard on August 6th and 7th to make that happen 🙂

Please call the office at 863-692-0906 on weekdays and speak to Jim and Jennifer about all things BAA Online Store- and IPT-related. And anything else that you might need help with or would like to chat about.

Please continue to patronize the BAA Online Store and to use my B&H affiliate links. Both are hugely appreciated.

with much love, artie

The Streak

Today marks twenty-eight days in a row with a new educational blog post. This blog post took about two hours to create.

Booking.Com

I could not secure the lodging that I needed for the UK Puffins and Gannets IPT in Dunbar, Scotland, so I went from Hotels.Com to Booking.Com and was pleasantly surprised. I found the rooms that I needed with ease at a hotel that was not even on Hotels.Com, and it was a nice hotel that I had seen in person. And the rates were great. If you’d like to give Booking.Com a shot, click here and you will earn a $25 reward.

Thanks to the many who have already tried and used this great service.

Revamped

I finally updated the IPT page to properly reflect the recently completed trips. If you doubt that I am really slowing down do click here to see the meager IPT schedule. Right now there are only two US-based IPTs on the schedule. Best news is that I turned up the missing registrant for the Fort DeSoto IPT so that will run. Do consider joining us if you would like to learn from the best.

Photographers Wanted

If you would like to learn to be a better bird photographer, consider joining me on either the Fort DeSoto IPT in late September or the San Diego IPT in January, 2018. With just one person signed up, DeSoto will offer practically private instruction. And you can tack on the In-the-Field/Meet-up Workshop Session on the morning of Tuesday September 26, 2017 for free. Click here for IPT info and the current but abbreviated schedule.

Gear Questions and Advice

Too many folks attending BAA IPTs and dozens of folks whom I see in the field, and on BPN, are–out of ignorance–using the wrong gear especially when it comes to tripods and more especially, tripod heads… Please know that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

Please Don’t Forget …

As always–and folks have been doing a really great job for a long time now–please remember to use the BAA B&H links for your major and minor gear purchases. For best results, use one of our many product-specific links; after clicking on one of those you can continue shopping with all subsequent purchases invisibly tracked to BAA. Your doing so is always greatly appreciated. Please remember: web orders only. And please remember also that if you are shopping for items that we carry in the BAA Online Store (as noted in red at the close of this post below) we would of course appreciate your business.

monkeys-on-snow-_P3A4449-Jigokudani,-Japan

This image was created on the 2017 Japan IPT with the hand held Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens (at 153mm) and my favorite bird photography camera body, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. ISO 800. Evaluative metering +2 stops as framed: 1/640 sec. at f/8 in Manual mode. Daylight WB.

LensAlign/FocusTune micro-adjustment: +3.

One AF point down from the center AF Point/AI Servo/Expand/Shutter button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure. The selected AF point was a bit down from the center of the frame.

Snow Monkeys foraging for seed on snow

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Tips on Pattern Images …

My #1 tip for photographing medium sized groups of birds, flowers, or monkeys is to seek out patterns without merges. For today’s image of a group of monkeys on a hillside I did not have to wait long. The individual Snow Monkeys were nicely spaced out on the hill so my main concern was with the framing. That was controlled by zooming in and out till everything looked good. In this case I made only two or three images.

If two of the monkeys had been merged eliminating one of the two in post would have been a difficult proposition because of the fur … With larger groups you can always remove one or two or three whatevers that are cut by the frame edge during post processing.

Hard Question …

What is the one monkey merge that I could do without in this image?

Jigokudani Monkey Park

The famed Jigokudani Monkey Park is about an hour outside of Tokyo. I remember the night before the first time I climbed that big hill. I went to bed dreaming of photographing the monkeys soaking in the natural hots springs and forage for leaves and stems of of low growing bushes and the trees on the hillsides. Surprise! As it turned out, the Monkey Park is really just a big zoo. The natural springs? They turned out to be large manmade rock bathtubs. And while on occasion you will see a Snow Monkey dining on parts of a hemlock, most of them subsist on grain spread by the zookeepers who, by the way, call the monkeys down from the hillsides for breakfast with plastic whistles. Please do not take this as a criticism. Many decades ago the local farmers hatched a plan to kill all the Snow Monkeys as they were eating their crops, apples, and grapes and nuts, perhaps. A local man intervened and came up with a plan to capture, re-locate, and fence in most of the monkeys and feed them with grain. And that is exactly what happened and exactly what carries on to this day.

Still, I have enjoyed photographing at Jigokudani. I have entered several of my Snow Monkey images into prestigious contests (without success). Do understand that every year a Snow Monkey image from the park is honored in one or more major photographic competitions. Realize however, that things are not always as they seem. I will not,however, be climbing that hill anymore. If I do ever return to Japan to do an IPT, my two great loves, the Red-crowned Cranes and the two species of sea eagles, will be on the menu, perhaps with a side order of Whooper Cranes.

The BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II) will teach you an efficient Mac/Photo Mechanic/Photoshop workflow that will make it easy for you to make your images better in Photoshop (rather than worse). That true whether you convert your images in DPP 4 or ACR. See the blog post here to learn lots more and to read a free excerpt.

You can order your copy from the BAA Online Store here, by sending a Paypal for $40 here, or by calling Jim or Jennifer weekdays at 863-692-0906 with your credit card in hand.

Everything mentioned above plus tons and tons more is detailed in the new BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II), an instructional PDF that is sent via e-mail. Learn more and check out the free excerpt in the blog post here. Just so you know, the new e-Guide reflects my Macbook Pro/Photo Mechanic/DPP 4/Photoshop workflow. Do note that you will find the RGB Curves Adjustment Color Balancing tutorial only in the new e-guide. Note: folks working on a PC and/or those who do not want to miss anything Photoshop may wish to purchase the original Digital Basics along with DB II while saving $15 by clicking here to buy the DB Bundle.

You can learn how and why I and other discerning Canon shooters convert nearly all of their Canon digital RAW files in DPP 4 using Canon Digital Photo Professional in the DPP 4 RAW conversion Guide here. And you can learn advanced Quick Masking and advanced Layer Masking techniques in APTATS I & II. You can save $15 by purchasing the pair. Folks can learn sophisticated sharpening and (NeatImage) Noise Reduction techniques in the The Professional Post Processing Guide by Arash Hazeghi and yours truly.

If In Doubt

If in doubt about using the BAA B&H affiliate link correctly, you can always start your search by clicking here. Please note that the tracking is invisible. Please, however, remember to shoot me your receipt via e-mail.

Please Remember to use my Affiliate Links and to Visit the New BAA Online Store 🙂

To show your appreciation for my continuing efforts here, we ask, as always, that you get in the habit of using my B&H affiliate links on the right side of the blog for all of your photo and electronics purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store, especially the Mongoose M3.6 tripod head, Wimberley lens plates, Delkin flash cards and accessories, and LensCoat stuff.

As always, we sell only what I have used, have tested, and can depend on. We will not sell you junk. We know what you need to make creating great images easy and fun. And please remember that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

I would of course appreciate your using our B&H affiliate links for all of your major gear, video, and electronic purchases. For the photographic stuff mentioned in the paragraph above, and for everything else in the new store, we, meaning BAA, 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 those who will be visiting the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store as well.

Amazon.com

Those who prefer to support BAA by shopping with Amazon may use the logo link above.

Amazon Canada

Many kind folks from north of the border, eh, have e-mailed stating that they would love to help us out by using one of our affiliate links but that living in Canada and doing so presents numerous problems. Now, they can help us out by using our Amazon Canada affiliate link by starting their searches by clicking here.