When The Stars Are Aligned

Photography isn't my occupation. It's more of a hobby. But it has infiltrated itself into every nook and cranny of my mind. Maybe you can relate. Every time I pass by a natural field splashed with light from the "golden hour" on my way to work I'm thinking tripod, f/11, ISO 50, remote release. Then I'm bummed I don't have time to stop and take the shot. Or any time a friend shares a killer shot of that hard to find bird that they somehow managed to photograph perfectly so you can see every detail in the feathers; I'm thinking, "dang it, I hate you." Then I'm kicking myself for not getting up early that morning to find that perfect photographic opportunity.

More often than not when I go out for a day of photography, I end up with a lot of shots that, for me, are just mediocre at best. I've found though that no matter how mediocre the catches of the day were, I always  have a great time. It's like therapy, without the big bill that goes along with it. Photography is, for me, the great escape from the stressful and mundane stuff I must deal with every day.

Sometimes though the stars seem to be aligned. I plan a day of photography, make decisions about where the best place to go might be, check the weather forecast, clean the gear, pack the car. A cup of java in the wee hours of the morning (that's a whole other discussion--I question my sanity sometimes when I get up at 3 am to go somewhere not too close to shoot a sunrise). I head out, the commute is no problem. And then the magic happens. Multiple shots that you just know are going to look great. Sunrise is spectacular, great wildlife encounters in just the right light, a couple of lifers. A dream day. I wish for those dream days every time I go out, but am content with less than stellar shots in exchange for the free therapy.

On a recent outing my plan was to capture some interesting foggy landscape shots with birds. I was very pleased with this one. The stars were aligned for foggy landscapes.

So what about you? What have your experiences been like as a photographer, professional or otherwise?

Making bad photos look great

I've been taking photographs, seriously, for about 2 1/2 years now. One thing I've learned is to time and compose the shot so that it comes out the way I intended. If I want a landscape shot of lots of Cypress trees at night in a swamp with lots of fog to create that eerie effect, then I know I'm going to have to find a location like that which I can access at night, and time it for a night with weather that suggests there might be fog, and then hope for the best. Another thing I've learned is that when I don't get the shot I wanted, Photoshop is my best friend!

I really like manipulating images to achieve the effect that I envision. While I am thrilled on those rare occasions that I take a shot and it has that wow look that I wanted, I'm just not that good to achieve that all the time. So I have no reservations about adjusting the heck out of the shot with photo editing software like Photoshop.

Here's a recent example. This is the original shot taken in the afternoon, in broad daylight. Not particularly interesting. Not completely in focus, a little soft.

And here's the finished product...

So what exactly did I do to make this? Well, to be honest, I don't even remember every adjustment I did. Some of the things I did were to shoot the original image in RAW. Images shot in RAW format provide more flexibility with making adjustments without making the image look bad. In Photoshop I cropped the image slightly and used several filters to alter the color and add a subtle drawing effect which I thought added to the eeriness. I added gradients to the top and bottom of the image to add black to darken the image. I sharpened the image. I also used layers to paint in some fog-like color and reduced the opacity to give it that see through fog look. I erased a small amount of the fog in certain places where the tree trunks are so that the fog would look real in the scene. Additionally, I created a layer and painted some gaussian blur just on the water to give it a calmer still look. Also, I reduced the brightness of the highlights in the water significantly.

So what do you do to your images besides crop and sharpen? What are your thoughts about photo manipulation?

Cheers, and happy creative editing!

Keywording Photos—Benefits and Tips

Does it take you more than a few seconds to find that great photo of that Reddish Egret Dark-morph feeding on a small fish at a particular park? If you have thousands, or even tens of thousands of images, it can be like finding a needle in a haystack.  It can also be frustrating to have so many photos and knowing that they are just getting lost in your ever growing collection of shots.

It’s all about effective keywording. I keyword all of my images extensively. The downside of keywording—and the only downside that I can think of—is the time it takes to set up an effective keyword hierarchy. But the benefits far outweigh the downside. The benefits are a big time savings when looking for a particular image, less frustration and a sense of total control over your photo collection.

Here are some tips for successful keywording:

• Decide what’s important to you and use keywords that make it easy to find those things that matter.
• Some things should always be keyworded. I always add keywords for the places my photos were taken. I remember where most of my images were taken. If I’m looking for a particular image, I can narrow down my search by searching for photos with the keyword for that location.
• Create a keyword hierarchy. Many image viewer programs allow nesting of keywords for greater specificity. For instance, I use a State/County/City hierarchy. This way I can find every image taken in Florida. But if I want to view just images taken in Tierra Verde, Florida, I can do that too. The nice thing is that because the keywords are nested, when I add the keyword Tierra Verde to an image, my photo viewer automatically adds the keywords Pinellas County and Florida.
• Create specialty keyword lists to further uniquely identify shots of something you have a lot of. I have a lot of wildlife shots. So I use a keyword wildlife with the following nested keywords: attacking, bathing, beak, breeding, breeding plumage, camouflage, captive, courting, dead, egg, feather, feeding, fighting, flock, flying, injured, mating, nest, open beak, parent, pooping, preening, running, scat, scratching, sleeping, stretch, tongue, wing, young. And some of those keywords have nested keywords under them. It might seem a bit excessive, but it’s easy for me to find all my shots of birds in beautiful breeding plumage. And, yes, I have a collection of shots of wildlife pooping—not for the faint of heart!
• Be careful not to duplicate keywords. It’s easy to create keywords that have similar meanings unintentionally. The keywords automobile and car might mean the same thing to you. So choose one and stick to it. This will keep your keywords more concise and make it easier to find what you’re looking for.
• Add keywords to your images as soon as you download them from your camera. Usually I will download my images, do a quick review to delete the ones I don’t want to keep and delete those, and then add keywords to the remaining images.
• Periodically export your keywords to a file so you can restore them if you have a catastrophic computer failure.

So what are you waiting for? Get your photos organized using keywords and find what you're looking for right now.

Artistic Liberties

Lately I've spent time taking perfectly good images and digitally altering them to achieve a special look or effect that I like. If you are a photographic purest, you'll frown at what I do. But, for me, I've found the process quite liberating. Now only that, but it also creates a whole new slew of artistic possibilities.

One technique that I've tried is "out of bounds" which is the effect that results from framing a part of your image so the rest of the image appears to be outside of the frame. It creates a very interesting almost 3-D effect. The best part is that it's really quite easy to do with Photoshop.

Here's a Tri-colored Heron seemingly about to walk right out of the image. Pretty cool, don't you think?

You could do this with almost any image. But it's best to pick an image that has some part of it specifically that you think would look good if it were "outside" a frame that you create around the rest of the image. It only takes about 10 minutes to do, a little longer if you're a stickler for detail. Here's a great tutorial on YouTube so you can give it a try.

My first blog post

So this is my first blog post, ever. The final minutes of 2011 are winding down. A new year begins soon. Today I took a trip to visit an old friend who passed away earlier this year. His ashes are spread at a place that he and I loved to go to, Circle B Bar Reserve in Lakeland, Florida. We had so many conversations and so much fun photographing the abundant wildlife, sharing information and generally joking and making asses of ourselves.

As the year comes to an end I want to wish Klaus a peaceful year in his new home. I miss you. And I know many others do too. You mattered, you made a difference, you impacted me in a very positive way. So Happy New Year my friend. And to all my friends out there, may 2012 be the best year ever.

Join me as I share my adventures. See you on the trails.