I've been trying the past few days to photograph purple martins and swallows without much success, Problem has been that there has not been much wind here in the
Windy City burbs when I've been out. Today was not different, but I decided to try anyway. After all, I was up at 4:30; there isn't much else I'd want to do at that hour.
Martins seem to favor dragonflies in these parts, It's funny to watch the chicks try to swallow a big dragonfly.
Anyway, this is the result of my efforts.
Canon 40D; 70-200 f/4@180.
1/1000, f/8, ISO 400.
Hand held.
Comments and criticisms welcome. And thanks for looking..
UGH! Working off laptop with an external monitor. Looks like re-calibration is needed. Trouble is, I'm told I can't calibrate two monitors from one computer unless I have some special graphics card.
pretty awesome capture, kent!! i hope you get a chance to repost this after working on a calibrated monitor as the colors do look off. there is a bluish cast on the bird too. as far as the comp, i might would move the bird up and left in the frame to give the bird room to look/fly into. the bird is too centered as presented. i'm not sure if your monitor caused the hotspot on the birds breast but it looks a little bright..once again, cool capture. the dragonfly is an added bonus!!
Great image except for a huge CYAN cast. Also, way too much yellow. Re-post is the best that I could do with the JPEG. Probably best to start frm scratch...
ps: Is the eye of young martins yellow???
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Hi Kent,
I like the capture and details in the wings. Try working the image doing the corrections that were recommended and repost to see your final master piece...:cool:
I tried to fix the color cast; I hope I managed toi succeed or at least improve it. I also tried to take account of all the suggestions you helpful folks made. I cropped some off the left and top. The hot spot on the breast was warm illumination from the sun; I tried to fix that using the APTATS quick mask technique, The yellow eye was red eye distorted by the color cast, I guess. Among the many errors that afflicted me, I misread the data from BreezeBrowser and failed to report that my flash actually worked (I thought it said that it didn't) and that falsh comp was -1. I don't know how to accurately judge the amount of cropping from the original file, but I'd guess what you are seing is about 30% of the original. Breeze Browser says that the subject distance ws 11.4 meters.
If you wouldn't mind looking again, I'd be very grateful. With much thanks to all.
Dragon Catcher
