I wake up at\u00a0my home-office at Indian Lake Estates (ILE), Florida about half of each year.\u00a0\u00a0 (Don’t ask me where the estates are….)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In any case, ILE consists of 450 modest homes on 4,000 acres surrounded by 17,000 protected acres on the Lake Wales Ridge.\u00a0 My late masseuse, John Lynott, told me that he saw a Florida Panther in the yard of the local church about 20 years ago, and there are Panther Crossing signs on SR 60 that I travel regularly.\u00a0\u00a0 On some mornings and even more rarely, on some afternoons, I do get out for an hour to photograph.\u00a0 The tame Sandhill Cranes make good subjects year round, and in early spring there are always some chicks about.\u00a0 In several months they grow to handsome colts.\u00a0\u00a0 The current issue of My Big Backyard (i.e., Ranger Rick for younger children), featured my image a\u00a0large chick\u00a0taking a sip of water and a spread of baby sandhill images inside.\u00a0 Do not laugh: they pay very well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the morning of March 15 I created two images that I liked; each required some special handling in Photoshop.\u00a0 The first image was of a displaying Boat-tailed Grackle.\u00a0 I photographed it from my vehicle near a golf course pond with the Canon 800mm f\/5.6L IS lens and the EOS-50D on the BLUBB (the BAA Big Lens Ultimate BeanBag).\u00a0\u00a0 I began photographing\u00a0the \u00a0bird from a spot just off sun angle when I noticed that if I moved forward a few yards I would be able to separate the three twigs and later, clone out the two distracting ones.\u00a0 I moved the car forward right to sun angle; fortunately the vehicle did not fall into the pond.\u00a0 The problem was that the very best pose was created right off the bat.\u00a0 The solution:\u00a0 I borrowed the foot from a later frame using a Quick Mask, covered the merged twigs\u00a0with the borrowed foot, rotated and scaled the selection, and finally erased the two extra twigs with the Clone Stamp.<\/p>\n
Here is the final image:<\/p>\n
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| I liked this pose best because of the wonderully flared tail. BTW, ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2\/3 stop: 1\/1000 at f\/8.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n I found an Osprey sitting on a low post with some dried moss for its nest.\u00a0 Lens and set-up same as above.\u00a0 ISO 400.\u00a0 Evaluative metering -1\/3 stop: 1\/1000 sec. at f\/8.\u00a0 With the 50D you need to be more careful about burning the whites in bright sun than with the MIII bodies.\u00a0<\/p>\n When I viewed the image on my laptop (where I optimize all of\u00a0 my images) I was dismayed to see a large nail in the post.\u00a0 Using the Clone Stamp, the Patch Tool, and a series of Quick Masks, I eliminated the nail and shorted a single long\u00a0stem of grass that had inesected with the bird’s body.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Here is the image out of the camera:<\/p>\n
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