I Gotta Be Nuts...

[Arthur Morris]

Woke at 3am. Packed. Headed south to Bosque at 5:35 am. Arrived at refuge at 6am. Moved to new spot after blast off at 6:25am. Beginning at 6:32 am made more than 200 images of thousands of geese against a yellow sky with one lovely cloud. Was tempted by the possibility of fire in the mist conditions but needed to head to the airport for my 10:10 am flight. Made it with time to spare.

This image was created with the Canon 70-200mm f/4 L IS lens handheld at 70mm with the EOS-1D MIII. ISO 500 (with ISO saftey shift). Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1/500 sec. at f/4.5 in Tv mode. AAFPS (45 point) AI Servo AF. (Cleaned up a few cut off birds along the top and left hand frame edges.

Dont' be shy. All comments welcome.

[Bob Malbon]

Well Art show us some more! I like the color, birds seem small. Maybe the 70mm is too short. Hill to me need to be stronger in this type of an image. I may retract this when in copy this and see a full screen view! Bob

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Bob, I am not sure what you mean by "the hill needs to be stronger." Please explain.

[Alfred Forns]

I think he is referring to the small size of the birds?

Bob more focal length would make them larger but you would also narrow everything else.

All I can say I wish I was there !!! Do have to handed to you for being there on your flight day, not an easy thing to do. The snow day comes to mind !!!

[Dan Brown]

Beautiful Mr. Morris! However, I am not seeing the stunning resolution that your posts usually display? Maybe it is this new fangled uploading. I have not posted for a few weeks and I don't know whats going on but some posts look as usual and others are not up to the high standards that I am used to seeing on this forum?

[Nancy A Elwood]

Art you are getting me all warmed up for my first visit to Bosque!! I am heading there this Sunday for 5 days. I have your guide in hand and BOY am I ready!!! I hope I will have opportunities like this. Lovely Art!!

[Bob Malbon]

Art, Sorry to be vague - cold meds! I feel the 70mm is to small which make the Mts. small. Bob

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Why not Av mode and do you use the AF button on the back in addition to the shutter. I have read a few of your books, it is a pleasure to talk with you.

Jeff Cashdollar

[Edward Fisher]

A great image against the early morning sky, Art.

It would be interesting to know the total count of geese in the image.

[Arthur Morris]

Beautiful Mr. Morris! However, I am not seeing the stunning resolution that your posts usually display? Maybe it is this new fangled uploading. I have not posted for a few weeks and I don't know whats going on but some posts look as usual and others are not up to the high standards that I am used to seeing on this forum?

Hi Dan, Call me Artie. Having just gotten back, I am not sure of the cause of the problems that are being handled by James and Blake Shadle. I do not think that the uploading process has anything to do with the apparent lack of image quality in various posts. With this image I think the apparent problem with the look of the image is a result of the high shutter speed and accompanying narrow d-o-f. The birds in the lower part of the frame are much farther away and thus do not look sharp. I wish that I had made this image at 1/15th sec (with a much smaller aperture).

[Arthur Morris]

Art you are getting me all warmed up for my first visit to Bosque!! I am heading there this Sunday for 5 days. I have your guide in hand and BOY am I ready!!! I hope I will have opportunities like this. Lovely Art!!

Have a great trip Nancy. Make sure that we have your road e-mail address as I am going to send a short but extremely valuable Bosque Site Guide update ASAP.

And rememmber to pray for south and east winds and bad weather. I wish that I could have stayed...

[Arthur Morris]

Why not Av mode and do you use the AF button on the back in addition to the shutter. I have read a few of your books, it is a pleasure to talk with you. Jeff Cashdollar

Hi Jeff, I rarely use back focus anymore but Robert O'Toole uses it all the time. For flight, I feel that it is easier to do one thing than two....

[Joe Senzatimore]

As always, a stunnig image. You have this type of shot down to a science. I have attempted it a few time(not at Bosque) with little success. Your images inspire me to keep at it.

[Arthur Morris]

Art, Sorry to be vague - cold meds! I feel the 70mm is to small which make the Mts. small. Bob

Hi Bob,

What I am usually trying to do with images of these types is to frame the whole flock and to include a strip of mountains at the bottom. Cropping in a section of the flock usually does not produce pleasing results.

[Robert Amoruso]

Welcome back Artie. Know that scene well.

[Arthur Morris]

A great image against the early morning sky, Art. It would be interesting to know the total count of geese in the image.

Thanks Edward. I would guess at least 1,000 birds in the air but the rule is that folks usually overestimate the number of large birds and underestimate the number of small birds when trying to count large flocks.

Not sure where the geese in this image would be as they are large birds that are far away.

John Chardrine might be able to help...

[John Chardine]

Ah, an interesting question- counting bird flocks. I do this for a living and it's not easy!

We use several methods. Visual estimation as Artie suggests can be hit and miss but trained individuals can do a good job. We train people by throwing a known number of grains of rice on a table and having people estimate numbers. With practice they get pretty good.

A technique I developed with a colleague is to use Photoshop. Attached image illustrates method:

1. Create a layer above the image.
2. Choose a square pencil of certain dimension (usually 3 pixels x 3 pixels works well but depends on image)
3. In the new layer place a square dot of a certain colour over each target.
4. In Histogram, have Ps give you a pixel count of the dot layer. Divide pixel count by number of pixels in each square dot. In this case it was 1620/9 = 180 birds.

There are other methods I use but there's too much detail here as it is!

Incidentally Artie, I noticed that your image has lots of jpegs anomalies and see that it is weighing in at about 100k. I think the image would improve if you saved at close to 200k. What do you think?

[Arthur Morris]

Ah, an interesting question- counting bird flocks. I do this for a living and it's not easy!

We use several methods. Visual estimation as Artie suggests can be hit and miss but trained individuals can do a good job. We train people by throwing a known number of grains of rice on a table and having people estimate numbers. With practice they get pretty good.

A technique I developed with a colleague is to use Photoshop. Attached image illustrates method:

1. Create a layer above the image.
2. Choose a square pencil of certain dimension (usually 3 pixels x 3 pixels works well but depends on image)
3. In the new layer place a square dot of a certain colour over each target.
4. In Histogram, have Ps give you a pixel count of the dot layer. Divide pixel count by number of pixels in each square dot. In this case it was 1620/9 = 180 birds.

There are other methods I use but there's too much detail here as it is!

Incidentally Artie, I noticed that your image has lots of jpegs anomalies and see that it is weighing in at about 100k. I think the image would improve if you saved at close to 200k. What do you think?

Thanks John, When I first read the reply notification I thought that you were nuts. 180 birds! Then I saw that you only counted a small portion of the frame.

As for the size, I am pretty sure that even a 200 kb j-peg would show artifacting when cropped so vigorously. I will repost below at 200kb so you can crop as you did above and compare the results. It will be a great learning experience for all.

[Arthur Morris]

OK. Now I need some Photoshop help. I re-did my JPEG action to reflect 1024 by 800 optimized to 199kb. When I right click on Image Properties in Photoshop it shows 201 kb but when I upload it to BPN it shows as only 143.4 kb. Anyone have any clues as to what is going on?

(The original post showed 345 kb in Image Properties but only about 100kb as an attachment...)

I am way confused.

ps; In the new action I reduced the sharpening and that seemed to prevent the artifacting...

[Arthur Morris]

ps: Does the reposted image look sharp?

pps: When I blew it up I saw lots of artifacting even with the reduced sharpening settings. I think that it may be a feature of all JPEGs once they are blown up...

[John Chardine]

Not possible to compare two re. jpeg artifacts because first was 800 wide and repost is 1024. Larger file will require proportionately more compression to arrive at file size target.

You mention an interesting point Artie, re. the size change after posting. I have noticed this but not to the degree you describe (>50k decrease in size). Typically if I save a jpeg at slightly over 200k it will squeeze under the BPN limit.

Clearly vBulletin seems to be manipulating the image before posting and in recent days it seems to be reducing image size more than normal. This could be related to the problems we have seen at the site over the past few days. Nothing scientific, but I have noticed a lot more images posted lately that are noisy with jpeg artifacts and are a lot smaller than the 200k limit. I think James is working on all this.

[Robert Amoruso]

Artie,

The post resizing has been coming up. Seems it is one of the weird things going on with the security upgrades. I believe James is aware of it.

[Robert Amoruso]

ps: Does the reposted image look sharp?

pps: When I blew it up I saw lots of artifacting even with the reduced sharpening settings. I think that it may be a feature of all JPEGs once they are blown up...


That is correct.

If you want to crop out a portion of the original, you need to start back at the original hi-rez version of the image and not then one that has been reduce in resolution and size.

[Jeff Nadler]

Artie, I'm a huge fan of multiple layers (nature's bounty, not Photoshop!) within a composition so I obviously love this image for that perspective. Lets' count: 1) the water, 2) birds in water, 3) dark shoreline, 4) mountain range, 5) thru 8) banded sky and 9) the birds. I'd say that is an amazing display of the layered look! this would of course look equally good as a narrower pano!

[Stu Bowie]

What an amazing sight, and love the colours in this. Great sighting Artie.

[Arthur Morris]

Artie, The post resizing has been coming up. Seems it is one of the weird things going on with the security upgrades. I believe James is aware of it.

I had experienced the apparent magical changing of JPEG sizes many times before the current problems.

[Dennis "Curly" Buchner]

Hi Artie, my Wife said the same thing to me when I went back to Bosque on more time at 5:00am before we had to leave on 11/14 and it was worth the hassle.

Great flight shot as the main pond was not holding many geese when I was there. Like the repost!

[Patty Sullivan]

Have a great trip Nancy. Make sure that we have your road e-mail address as I am going to send a short but extremely valuable Bosque Site Guide update ASAP.

And rememmber to pray for south and east winds and bad weather. I wish that I could have stayed...
Hi Artie. I keep laughing at the "pray for bad weather" sentance. I pray for it every day, bad weather being the only really good photography weather. Besides my duck likes it and since I am half duck myself, I like it too. Funny funny. Needed a good laugh. I want to go back there tonight! I love that place, too! Two days of bad weather there, starting tomorrow. Someone hold me back... Patty P>S> I am going to be brave and submit one of the images I got last weekend.. Pintail Ducks from Quackers and me... Had a great time last weekend!! love that Bosque!!! Be kind. PS