The Farrington Lake System in NJ is a series of small lakes that feed into each other. They are host to a variety of waterfowl, especially during migrations. This image was captured early this morning, the sun had just risen but it would be a while before it would clear the trees enough to throw direct light on this particular spot.
Thoughts prior to taking the shot: I wanted a flight of two or three geese in flight, just after takeoff.
Because the light was low,I decided on using fill flash for extra pop and catch lights.
Being relatively close to the busy background, a shutter speed of 1/250 was selected in order to create motion blur and allow the flash to recycle quickly for sequences.
Chose a position where the geese would likely be flying toward the camera.
This is frame 4 from a series of 6. 4 and 5 were the only ones in focus, the flash did not cycle in time for 5. (of course 5 has the best dropped wing position and slightly better framing.) Frames 1-3 have a slight angle towards camera.
Self critique: Overall satisfied, but there's room for improvement. Would prefer a better angle toward camera and better composition, the far bird is tight on the edge. A lower camera angle would've put the birds higher in the tree line.
Havn't decided on a crop yet, hoping to get some feedback on that. Isolating the foward bird would be a 45-50% crop, doable, but...
Camera: Canon 7D
Lens 400mm 5.6L (It focuses and tracks noticeably faster than my 300F4L, which is why I prefer it for in flight work)
Flash: Canon 600EX RT ETTL, HSS (Should have chosen 2nd curtain) no compensations.
Handheld
Exposure: ISO 800 1/250 F5.6
100% of frame intact
Processing: Lightroom4 for RAW conversion and overall processing/sharpening, Denoise5 for noise reduction. Overall exposure boosted by .5, reduced saturation for highlight control and boosted vibrance to compensate. Selective sharpening/ minor tonal work on the birds. Resized for Web, sharpened .3P at 50%
Nice one and a solid self critique. Nice job leveraging low light motion and blurs are always interesting. Either I like them do not but usually a slower shutter is required to make the blur stand out and add value to the picture. In this image the blur does appear but looks like the shutter was too slow as opposed to an abstract appearance. On the other hand you have hot spots so maybe a faster shutter with a panning technique might do the trick - experiment some. I agree the frame is too tight and more room needed in the ULHC. Do you know how to add canvas there is a good instructional thread in the Education and Tutorial Forum that can help.
The crop is always subject but too much negative space on the bottom and feel free to use the clone tool to fill in and clean the upper layer. On balance I like what you are doing here the composition is appealing and you have a good eye. Nice field technique advancing the ISO for low light and shooting against a muted background. You controlled the frame well which is critical to a balanced picture. Just curious how far were you from the subject - good work here and please - keep em coming.
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 10-19-2012 at 04:22 PM.
Jeff and Michael thank you for your thoughts, I'm sorry it took so long to reply-things got a little hectic.
Jeff, distance to subject here was ~25 yards, too far for the 300 and it's faster aperture. Going to High Speed Sync really cuts back on the effectiveness of the flash,-great for close in stuff but anything at a distance hasn't been working out too well. I have several concepts that I will continue working on wrt blurring action/BIF. Though most of the results so far have been unacceptable, they feel within grasp. As soon as I figure out how to make an album, I'll put some of those in it-sort of a "works in progress" kind of thing.
I havn't worked with PS all that much, canvas extensions seem extremely useful-thanks for the heads up!
Michael, pretty impressive, thank you for taking the time to do that. Lens is not ideal for this situation/setup as yields are very low. Just wish it had IS. Tried it with a Wimberly, having trouble keeping the birds in the frame much less land a sequence.
Canada Geese at Farrington
