{"id":3102,"date":"2010-11-09T21:35:20","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T01:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/?p=3102"},"modified":"2011-02-24T11:44:15","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T15:44:15","slug":"is-it-photography-or-bald-eagle-sharpness-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/2010\/11\/09\/is-it-photography-or-bald-eagle-sharpness-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it Photography or \u2026. & Bald Eagle Sharpness Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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My right-hand man Jim Litzenberg and I traveled down to Naples, FL on Friday afternoon so that I could help out my friend James S. White on Saturday morning. Jim was leading a photo group at the Naples Botanical Gardens<\/a>. This beautiful place exists only because of the vision and hard work of Jim’s wife Linda. Though I brought my macro lens on the walk, I never used it, turning instead to my trusty super telephoto lens. This water lily image was created in the pre-dawn light with the tripod-mounted Canon 800mm f\/5.6L IS lens and the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 1\/3 stops: 1\/30 sec. at f\/8. Rear button focus with the star and AF-On buttons switched as detailed in the recently updated Mark IV User’s Guide<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Is it Photography or ….<\/h2>\n

I presented four programs on Sunday morning at the FCCC statewide convention teaching pretty much non-stop to a standing room only crowd for 4 1\/2 hours but for a 3-minute pit stop. My spiel was very well received. Jim Litzenberg manned the BIRDS AS ART table and did a land-office business with the books and educational CDs. After lunch I helped judge a print contest. And after the keynote presentation I was asked to join a panel discussion. I am not positive of the topic but I think that it went something like this: Is it photography or is it graphic art? <\/p>\n

The other three panelists were Photoshop expert Jane Zizer<\/a>, veteran Sarasota photographer Carmen Schettino<\/a>, and renowned black and white fine art photographer Clyde Butcher<\/a>. Though Clyde’s work is breathtakingly spectacular, the term “fine art photographer” always sticks in my craw. What are the rest of us doing; not-so-fine art photography? I met Clyde a good five years ago at a similar conference in Florida. He attended my program and I attended his. Afterwards I went up to him, shook his hand, and told him how much I had enjoyed his program. To the very best of my memory, his response was, “Bird photography is easy.” Then he turned and walked away….<\/p>\n

As I walked up to my seat on the panel, I was mentally pulling on the gloves, getting ready for battle as the moderator mentioned something about digital manipulation. Is what folks are doing today photography? Within minutes I was amazed. First Clyde Butcher stated that if he noted a cigarette butt in one of his masterpieces that he would remove it. I almost fell off of my chair. Then Carmen said that when he was judging–something that he does quite often, that he was fine with whatever you did in Photoshop as long as he could not tell that you did anything. I commented, “So it’s not digital manipulation that you are against, it’s bad digital manipulation.” That got a big laugh. Someone asked me what a photograph was. I answered, it’s what you get when you push the shutter button, whether a piece of film or a digital file.<\/p>\n

I explained that 99% of my images were true to the natural history of the moment. That I often used present day technology to remove distracting elements from my images and to add canvas and occasionally a wing tip. That I labeled my images honestly and always let folks know what we did to create an image. And that whenever I entered a contest I followed the rules to the letter. <\/p>\n

The moderator asked whether I was a graphic artist or a photographer. I said, “Both. Just like all the other photographers gathered here.” That brought a big cheer. Good questions from the audience brought the four of us closer and closer to total agreement. And that is just what the four of us did. We agreed that it was only the end result, the final photograph, that mattered. Did your creation move folks? Did it have impact? Was it beautiful? Did it make people smile, or make them think? <\/p>\n

What you choose to call the final product did not matter to any of us. A photograph? A photo illustration? A manipulated image? A digital creation? Who cares? Is it beautiful, dramatic, interesting, thought-provoking? If yes, then it’s art (whether or not anyone ever buys the print!) <\/p>\n

Feel free to share your thoughts below with a comment. <\/p>\n

Bald Eagle Sharpness Comments<\/h2>\n

The wide variety of opinions as to whether or not the Bald Eagle image in yesterday’s post was sharp or not was amazing by not surprising. To me, the JPEG looks plenty sharp. The eye of the eagle is razor sharp. The black feathers are sharp. The head feathers in the presented JPEG might not look very sharp, but in the optimized TIFF, they are. Creating a JPEG always increases the contrast in an image; that might account for some folks stating that white head feathers are not sharp. <\/p>\n

I will be back with the answers to questions 2 and 3 asap. If anyone wants to go to Greece in late February with Robert O’Toole and me to photograph the spectacular Dalmatian Pelicans, please e-mail me tonight for advance notice of the details at samandmayasgrandpa@att.net. <\/p>\n

Shopper’s Guide<\/h2>\n

Here is the gear that I used to create the water lily image: <\/p>\n

Canon 800mm f\/5.L IS lens<\/a>
\nCanon EOS-1D Mark IV professional digital camera body<\/a><\/p>\n

And from the BAA On-line Store:<\/p>\n

Gitzo 3530 LS Tripod<\/a>
\nMongoose M3.6 Tripod Head<\/a>
\nDouble Bubble Spirit Level<\/a><\/p>\n

If you are considering the purchase of a major piece of photographic gear be it a new camera, a long lens, a tripod or a head, or some accessories be sure to check out our complete Shopper’s Guide.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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My right-hand man Jim Litzenberg and I traveled down to Naples, FL on Friday afternoon so that I could help out my friend James S. White on Saturday morning. Jim was leading a photo group at the Naples Botanical Gardens. This beautiful place exists only because of the vision and hard work of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[89,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-89","category-photography-tips","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}