{"id":596,"date":"2009-07-28T06:30:35","date_gmt":"2009-07-28T10:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/?p=596"},"modified":"2011-02-24T14:26:18","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T18:26:18","slug":"back-to-the-basics-and-more-3galapagos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/2009\/07\/28\/back-to-the-basics-and-more-3galapagos\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Basics and More #3\/Galapagos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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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.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Deciding to keep the image above was a no-brainer.\u00a0 The bird was perfectly juxtaposed to the imaging sensor.\u00a0 It\u00a0is diagonally oriented in the\u00a0in the\u00a0frame.\u00a0 And\u00a0the sand had acted as a huge reflector, lighting the undersides of this female frigatebird perfectly.\u00a0 This is just another image that shows that you can <\/em><\/strong>make great images in bright sun on blue sky days even during\u00a0the midday hours.\u00a0 It was photographed at 1:33 pm.\u00a0 (Click on each image to see a larger version.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Basics<\/h2>\n

Having created almost a thousand images on each of several landings, and possibly as many as 10,000\u00a0images on the trip, editing my work (selecting the keepers) is an important task.\u00a0 In fact, I never allow myself to fall behind more than a single day, and that only when I am too exhauasted to stay awake at the laptop.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Whether you are photographing in your backyard or on a great international trip, if you do not edit your work on a daily basis you will exacerbate your\u00a0storage problems and face a huge task when you do get around to it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For years I have been known to be the fastest gun in the west when it comes to editing a day’s take.\u00a0 On the Galapagos trip, I pared 987 images down to 87 in less than ten minutes.\u00a0\u00a0 How do I do it?\u00a0 #1 of course is experience.\u00a0 I have been picking and keeping my best images for almost 26 years now.\u00a0 #2 is that I use Breezebrowser to do my editing.\u00a0 Nothing is faster.\u00a0 Breezebrowser is one of the few programs that lets you view the JPEGs that are created along with the RAW files at the instant of capture (even when you think that you are using RAW capture only).\u00a0 While going through the images in\u00a0slideshow mode,\u00a0I can view each\u00a0almost instantly when I press the right\u00a0arrow key to advance (or the left\u00a0arrow key to go back).\u00a0 I press the up arrow key when I want to keep an image; this places a blue check mark next to the file name.\u00a0 If I wish to remove the checkmark, I simply hit the down arrow key to deselect.\u00a0 Breezebrowser allows me to view each image as\u00a0sharpened; this gives me an accurate idea of how the image will look when it is eventually sharpened.\u00a0 (This sharpening is only temporary and does not affect the RAW file at all, but is sure is convenient.)\u00a0\u00a0 If you would like to learn more about Breezebrowser the product (along with Downloader Pro), click here:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.birdsasart.com\/breezebrowser.htm<\/a>.\u00a0 Complete details on how I use Breezebrowser for editing are covered in our Digital Basics File here: https:\/\/store.birdsasart.com\/shop\/category.aspx?catid=30<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Digital Basics also covers the complete BIRDS AS ART digital workflow and contains dozens of great Photoshop tips and techniques.<\/p>\n

When doing my first edit and deciding whether or not to keep a given image, I simply ask, “Is this a good image?”\u00a0 If the answer is yes, I keep it.\u00a0 (See “And More” below for exceptions.)\u00a0\u00a0 At some point I do a second edit, choosing the best one or two images from several or many.\u00a0 And before I transfer the folder to the home computer, I do a final ruthless edit keeping only the very best images.\u00a0\u00a0 My rule for doing the initial edit is “If in doubt, keep it.”\u00a0 For the final edit the rule is, “If in doubt, delete it.”\u00a0\u00a0 For the entire Galapagos trip I kept only 454 images.\u00a0 This represented a keeper rate of about\u00a05%.\u00a0 (My standards, however, are very high; many folks would dearly love to have a good percentage of my rejects in their files <smile>)<\/p>\n

And More…<\/h2>\n

It has taken me more than five years to learn to think digitally while editing.\u00a0 I now keep some terrible images.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 So that I have them to\u00a0serve as source material for similar images that need to be repaired.\u00a0 You can scavenge wing-tips, tops of heads, lizard toes, areas of rock and sand and sections of all sorts of backgrounds\u00a0 to be Quick Masked into images that have family jewel potential.\u00a0 Two of my very favorite images from the trip needed to borrow parts of another image in the series in order to succeed.\u00a0 Had I deleted the inferior images without realizing their value, I would have been plumb out of luck.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This image (with the end of the adult's bill cut off by the frame edge) was created with the handheld Canon 400mmm f\/4 IS DO lens and the EOS-50D. ISO 400. Evaluative metering at zero: 1\/800 sec. at f\/6.3.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Above is the optimized image.\u00a0 Below is the original capture.\u00a0 Had I not saved another image in the series with a lot less merit than the one above, the image with the yawning chick would have wound up in the trash bin….<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This is the original capture.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

To complete this\u00a0learning experience, click here to read the great BPN thread on this image: http:\/\/www.birdphotographers.net\/forums\/showthread.php?t=41869<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And for a similar tale involving the toes of a Marine Iguana,\u00a0click here:\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/www.birdphotographers.net\/forums\/showthread.php?t=41993<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ngg_shortcode_3_placeholder 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. <\/p>\n

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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":[88,37,45,34,49,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-88","category-400mmdo-f4","category-50d","category-70-200mm-f4","category-galapagos-2009","category-photoshop-tips","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}