Somehow it got to be Saturday and I hadn’t been out to shoot all week. So I ran down to North Mountain Park where the cone flowers are looking pretty good in spite of the drought. This was shot at f2.8 with a macro lens and I like the shallow depth of field but did add back some detail in post processing. It came out so bright I didn’t need to add any saturation for once though.
I can’t say this is the best image I shot this week but it did seem most appropriate to the holiday. This is the first eagle I’ve seen at Tule Lake since early March. So I guess it is true that there are some year round residents.
In post processing I added some detail and saturation and a spotlight on the bird. I have just started using Topaz deNoise which gives a nice smooth look but also requires some extra sharpening in Photoshop at the end.
I found these lilies blooming at Shore Acres State Park near Charleston. The Gardens are what remains of the estate of timber baron L.J. Simpson. This was taken hand held as I was playing chauffeur for my Mother and could not take the time I would have liked for photography. But the image stabilization worked well. In post processing I first adjusted the exposure a little using levels. Then I edited out another partial lily in the upper left hand corner using a fill with color selected from the left. ( I tried content-aware fill but it wanted to put another lily there.) I then took it into Color Efex Pro where I added detail, a little saturation and used darken lighten center to put emphasis on the top flower. Finally back in photo shop I added a smart sharpen filter.
I was privileged to spend a couple of hours watching this burrowing owl family last Sunday evening near Burns, Oregon. The result was over 300 images which after editing for composition and sharpness left about 150 keepers. So, it was hard to choose but I liked this shot for having 5 of the six young owls in it with no weeds in their faces and all with a little different expression and posture.
In post processing I cropped a little to emphasize the owls and added a little sharpening, a little saturation and a little warmth. I then darkened the corners and borders and lightened the birds faces ever so slightly.
I’m running late with last week’s image of the week as I have been very busy with a three day workshop on bird photography in Harney County. I caught this Western Meadowlark on Saturday but stay tuned for next week because there were some awesome birds on Sunday and Monday.
In post processing I cropped a little for composition, added a little detail and saturation and just a slight highlight on the bird to bring him out.
I went looking for birds at North Mountain Park and instead found a beautiful display of red poppies. Most of them were past prime but this one by the house looked pretty good. I had the telephoto lens on for the birds so I had to set up 10 feet away to get this shot. the background was kind of washed out so I added a green texture and blended it to get what I thought was just the right look for the background.
So, I decided if I was going to be a bird photographer I needed to learn a little more about birds. Taking a Life Long Learning class on birds has helped me to see that I was even more ignorant than I knew. Take for example the spotted towhee which, it turns out, is a very common bird in these parts and a year round resident. Yet I had never seen one before. Perhaps because I wasn’t looking.
In any case this one was a good poser. One of the challenges of bird photography is that most of them refuse to hold still. In post processing I added detail and sharpness, a little saturation and emphasized the bird with a darken/lighten center filter.
I had to put off my trip to California again this week. But as I was walking down along the Greenway I discovered that I had an abundance of California Poppies practically in my back yard. So, I geared up with tripod, macro lens, closeup filter and kneepads and headed out to see what I could do with them. It was a cool morning so some of the blossoms were reluctant to open fully. I like how the grasses blurred out to form the perfect background. I did add some saturation and detail in post processing as usual.
One of the holy grails of bird photography is catching the bird with lunch in its mouth. I don’t suppose this one will win any prizes because the fish is not sharp. I think it was wiggling around too much. I might get points for breeding plumage though.
In post processing I did the usual with some detail, saturation and darkening the edges. I also added a smart sharpen filter mainly to reduce noise which was needed because I was shooting at 400 ISO in order to help reduce camera shake from hand holding the big lens inside the car.
This ia another one from Tule Lake. I am really falling in love with that place.
So, having committed to a project shooting in the Klamath Basin every month for a year, I decided I needed a longer telephoto lens. After a lot of research and angst I opted for the Tamron 150-600mm. You can read more about my thought process at http://jeannehoadley.com/Klamath.
I just got the lens yesterday so have only had one chance to take it out for a test drive. I found a few birds to shoot in Ashland’s North Mountain Park, including this Western Scrub Jay who chose to park himself at the very top of a 30 foot tall tree. I was maybe 50-100 feet from the base of the tree. I did crop the image some for a better composition but overall I have to say I am pretty impressed with the performance of this lens, given the cost.
The image was way underexposed out of the camera due to the bright sky but a little work in Photoshop fixed it right up. Detail and saturation were also added in Color Efex Pro. I may take it a step further and add a textured background to give it the look of a classic botanical.