This golden eye was at the wetlands on a very calm morning.  As I was trying to figure out what type of image I was after he opened up his eye to see what I was up to.  Well that is all I needed.  The reflection and mystic the image gives makes one keep thinking as this bird is watching you.  That is what I wanted.  I put the eye almost dead center.  That is where you eye naturally goes and there is nothing else to the image which adds to the mystery.  Usually there is a clear line between water and animal etc but this image there is none. 

It is this type of interest that keeps people thinking about an image.  If you are at this site I am assuming you like nature photography but even if you did not and you like people images try to keep the mystery in some images.  Keep your viewing guessing.  If there is something out of place or out of the ordinary that will keep people looking at your image longer.  That is what you want.  If all the images look the same (and there are many images that are technically perfect but there is nothing for the viewer to spark the interest).

just another example that even thought the focal point is dead center it works.  They always say to add interest to an image move it to one of the corners and have it offset.  This is one that has interst but the focal point is dead center.

Again the image was taken with Canon 30D with a 100mm – 400mm.  Bird photography will almost dictate higher end equipment.  Their size is smaler, rapid movement and distance from lens makes it almost impossible to get this type of a shot with a pocket type camera (though not impossible).

images that I wanted to get. One photograph took me about 6 shots the other took me about 1000 shots.

Let’s back up and find out how I had the images in my head to try to get in the first place. This is going to sound a bit backwards but here it is. I have taken many images of fruit and flowers over the years. From that my mind began to imagein many different images of flowers but in an artistic manner. Like a painting from a master painter but with the camera. Once I began to think in these terms my photography took a different turn. 

Your image in your head may be something completely different. Maybe you see comic strip images and are going after that look. Obviously people will not be comic strip but you can do things like get their motion in a blurred state with their eyes sharp. Saturate the colors and maybe make the shoes they are wearing with bigger. That will require some manipulation in a software package like photoshop but if that is the image you see in you mind then go for it and see where it takes you.

The image in your head first needs to form. Then you need to practice and try different things until you start to see those images materialize on film or digital format.

We will stay with this topic for a bit. I think it is what makes the photography so interesting and you began to develop your own style.
 

I have a photograph of an Allen's Hummingbird. This little guy would let you walk right up to him and photograph him. He was not shy or get bothered with a large lens rather close to him.

 
Photograph Cropped

So here I cropped the image. This gives the image a little more interest as you can see what the image is suppose to be, a hummingbird.  The pinks and blues add to the image.  This does need to be sharpened and then have the image smoothed a little bit.  Neat image does a nice job of doing that and is fairly inexpensive.

Extreme Cropped Photograph

Here is the same image with a more extreme
crop. Again noticed were the eye is placed within
the image. Eyes are usually (but not always)
the main focus of a photograph. With the eye
being in the upper right hand corner of the image
it makes it a bit more interesting. They call this
cutting an image into thirds. If you draw two line
horizontally and two lines vertically then you
get an image that is broken up and you can
then place the important parts of the image into the
different sections to give the image more interst.

Tomorrow I will draw the lines and we can take the image above and play around with were we put his eye and then you can start to see how this can change the way a photograph looks. The first image has a more snap shot look and feel. That is how nature photography is sometimes. You are hanging on the side of a hill and could possibly go into the river so you take a few snap shots and then crop the image later. This has been done for a long time. The y did it with film (I don't know if they did cropping with glass plate or not). You can do this with your images and see which one you like best.

I will then talk about highlights and darks. The image above has a few areas that are a bit blown out (the whites are too white to show any detail. We always want detail in the whites and the darks (or we are going for a certain look) So much to talk about.

There is the usual. Keep the main point of the image (like the eyes of a pet or person) in the interesting quadrants of the frame. If you do not know what that is it is ok. I will talk more about it but first I want to talk about the art.

I usually start off with a vision in my head of what I would like to get. When I first started photography I never could get the image I saw in my mind onto film or digital format. It was after shooting for a while before I began to get those ideas I had on film (or digital format). Take the apple images. I had a project of an “apple a day”. The photograph you see is the image I had in my mind. It is the image I wanted to put on film (digital photography). It took me about 6 shots to get it. 

So what is the secret to making that happen? Next time I will concentrate on how to visualize the image you want and how the practice of photography will get you there. I think it might take many post on the visual artistic side of photography but I hope you will learn this aspect that truly makes photography the fine art medium that it is.

A couple of sites that offer information from lighting to lenses are photo.net
another really good site on strobs is strobist We did have an OC chapter going but we have not had a meetup in a while now.
 

This is the next road trip where disaster hit.  I had just purchased a nice entry level professional camera before I left.  I had left my small little pocket camera behind because I figured I would have no use for it.  Well about 1/3 of the way into the trip I got a fatal error on the camera's processor.  I had to stop and pick up another camera, a small pocket camera is about all that was to be found in a small town.

Glacier National Park has some wonderful wildlife and unfortunately I was still trying to figure out how to use the camera.  This mountain goat and her young were not worried about me or other people around.  This image was taken without zoom or any settings applied.  It would have been better if I would have tried some different angels like low and maybe higher.  The image still captures a certain interest though. The background is obviously real so they are wild and not captive animals and to be this close was a great treat.  It is not an award winner but I might just print this one out and put it on my desk.

It is the rarity of the image (for us city dwellers) that makes the image work.  By leaving some of the background in the image it gives it a sense of place.  The eye first settles on the mountain goats but then moves on up and around to take in the surrounding.  When you look at an image find the ones that are pleasing and that you like then start dissecting it so you can begin to take images like those that you like.

Where is the main focal point?

Does the surrounding impact the image?  Does it give it depth of field?  Add interest?  Lead the eye to an exit point?

What would you have done differently to give it a little bit more?

Start to paint an image of what you would have done.  This begins the practice of having an idea of what you are after.  If you do not have an idea then start to take photos a different angles, move in close, shoot off center…

Imagination is what start to turn an ordinary image like the one above and give it some real power.

I really seem to have bad luck when I travel.  I have had two mid range cameras quit on me on very expensive road trips.  I will talk about that in another article – what to do and how to prepare for those long awaited photo trips.

I was in South America.  Peru, Bolivia and Chili to be exact.  This was a few years back now but the image is timeless.  If you will believe this was taken with a small pocket camera would you be surprised?  The camera has a few settings and the lens has digital magnification etc but the image is gorgeous just the same.  There was on person on the stairs that I removed with Photoshop but other then that just some sharpening and some saturation in color is about all that was done.

It is the composition that makes this shot.  The main buildings is the focal point.  The eye is drawn to it immediately but the stairs has a nice way of pulling the eye down into the rest of the image.  The person needed to be removed because the eye stopped and lingered on the person.  It was a distraction with blue and red with the green a stone colors.  The low clouds add to the mystery of Maccu Pichu and really show cases why this is one of the wonders of the world.

I can only image what it would have been like if my camera did not quit on me.  Luckily some of the new cameras coming on the market are a bit more durable and dependable.  I will say this though that you should always test out new equipment at least a couple of weeks before departure.  This way if there is a problem you can either take it back and exchange it or for another one or get it fixed before you leave.

The next image was taken with the 45mm.  With the 45mm lens it is as if you are their almost a 1:1 aspect ration.  The shutter speed was slowed down to give the water a blurry texture.  That is to help give it the artist touch if you will.  You need to add visual appeal.  It would still be a beautiful image but by blurring the water the eye makes the mental note that something is different and it is appealing.  This helps keep your viewer looking a little longer and wondering….

A 35mm would give the images a more wide angel.  This is great for group shots but you need to be a bit closer.  Landscape artist use the wide angel a lot to capture huge vistas.  A fish eye lens really distorts things and can be used t really add some unique perspective.  It certainly is a unique look.

I should have used a polarizing filter in the above image.  A polarizing filter would have gotten ride of the glare from the water.  Next time you look at an image with a water fall make note of any reflective water.  There will probably be none if you see the has vivd colors and the water has the "cotton candy" effect.  If you look at the same image from someone who took a "snap" shot you will probably see glare from the water and the colors will not be a s vivid.  You can get the cotton candy effect from a pocket camera that lets you shoot in a "slow" shutter speed.  A tripod is a good idea as it is hard to hold a camera complete still for the second or two to get the image.

That is a very brief introduction to lenses. I felt a need to give this brief introduction before I started to talk about how the photographs are taken. It is easy to talk about the technical but it is trying to convey the artistic of photography that is the challenge. As time goes on I will talk more about the lenses and how I used them to create the photographs that you see.
 

One of the smallest hawks at the wetlands and it is one of the most beautiful.  This is a male Kestrel as the females are not as colorful.  This was a nice clear image.  Luckly the kestrel let me get a little closer then most would.  They are very quick to take flight.

I left the tree branch in the image as it adds to the visual appeal the eye is taken immediately to this beautiful bird.  As the eye wanders about the image the branch is a natural entry and exit for the eye.  If I had cropped out the branch The kestrel certainly is beautiful enough to hold the attention but I think it would loose something.

Again the image was taken with a Canon 30D with the 100mm – 400mm.  I was using a tripod with this photo.  The tripode works great for keeping images very focused also haveing an aperature seeting of f8 also helps open up the depth of field to keep the entire image of the kestrel sharp.  I probably should go back in and add a little highlight to one of the eyes as they are very dark and I think are missing something but….

What would have made this image a step above would have been a 600mm and the top of the line Canon or Nikon.  Does it really make that big of a difference?  Yes!  The fixed lenses have a much sharper and a more robust image quality that the zooms can not get.  The 100mm – 400mm is a top of the line profesional lens but the 600 mm is something else.  I have compared images with the two and usually the 600mm gets a bit more more out of the shot (but not always).

1. The overall activity of the animal in this case a very active and beautiful bird that is very photogenic
2. Try to keep composition in mind
3. Some images you may not want to crop so keep the artistic image in mind
4. You will need to make sure you have an image stabilizer if you want to crop
5. A tripod if you do not have image stabilization (probably should use a tripod any how)
 

When you crop images they have a tendancy of getting a bit grainy looking.  There are a few tricks to help correct this.  One is Neat Image.  It takes the image and and fills in the data that is missing giving the image a cleaner less grainy look.  It is a very inexpensive as well.  You can also use other software to enlarge the image so information is not loss and then crop but still may need something like Neat Image to clean it up.

     The red egret photographed here shows and uncropped photograph with a cropped photograph. I then did some saturation, and used levels to find a right balance, in raws mode I adjusted the
Black levels
Exposure
Saturation
(I will talk more about the curves, layers, etc and printing in the near future. There are so many important things to do to get he best print made from your photograph.)
The cropped image looks a bit blurry. The blurring is from cropping and not having using a tripod. I used the unsharpen filter in Photoshop to help sharpen the image. (all images should have some sharpening done. Digital photography has come along way in a short period of time but some things are not perfected. The sharpening of an image should not be viewed as manipulation but as correcting the flaws in digital cameras. You can over sharpen of course.) As we can see it looks more grainy and that is from the unsharpen filter in Photoshop we used. So how can we have an image look sharper with out the grainy effect? There is a very inexpensive tool called Neat image.
I know there are many other types of software out there that does what Neat Image does. I am talking about Neat Image because it does not cost much money and it is a simple tool to use. I do not believe they have a Mac version yet (that is the draw back).
Neat image works as a photoshop plug-in or as a stand alone software. So if you do not use Photoshop you can purchase the stand alone software package. I wont go into how to use the software here we just want to see the effects. The final red egret image is below or you can see the entire red egret photograph series here.
(I will find some better images to show the grainy effects. By time I reduced the size on these you can not see the grain anymore.)