Ducks on Beluga Lake, Fog at Sunrise

[Dave Taylor]

Hey everyone-
I was lucky enough to witness this scene this past Monday morning - the day after the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival ended. With the recent Mt. Redoubt eruptions, we've had a good deal of ash in the air - making for some amazing moon & sunrises. I've posted several more photos on my website (on the Journal page) over the past 3 posts, please stop by and take a look. www.sixtyonenorth.com

The nitty gritty:
Canon 50D & Live View on for focusing
600 mm IS with AF turned off
f16 @ 1/180"
ISO 200

No saturation adjustments - this is how it looked. There wasn't enough data for PhotoMerge to run successfully, so I blended the two exposures manually.
Comments and critiques welcome!

[Robert Amoruso]

You had something going on here Dave but I don't think the ducks work. They are two small and just dots on the landscape. Aiming up and getting the mountains in the fog and ash induced color might have been a better option.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Dave,
I am actually OK with the ducks but for me...a good portion of the RH side is blown/detailless as presented. May be an issue with compression...but I suspect that considering the specs (sunny 16 rule) it may be a B/C issue in PP'ing or something similar. Would love to tweak more of the layers out in PP'ing and my feeling is that they are there given the exposure. Re-post if you tweak it.

[Mike Fuhr]

What's the sunny 16 rule, Roman??

[Dave Taylor]

You had something going on here Dave but I don't think the ducks work. They are two small and just dots on the landscape. Aiming up and getting the mountains in the fog and ash induced color might have been a better option.

Thanks for taking the time to offer your input Robert. That was one of my concerns too, but I wanted to show the ducks in a "grand environment", kind of an environmental portrait if you will. I got several close up shots of a variety of ducks and shorebirds, but none of them were "fulfilling" shots for me. So I really focused on dramatic silhouettes and wildlife in their environment.
I realized a very important lesson this weekend - I'm not very good at the standard bird photography (that's my opinion:)). There are many (like yourself) that do it so expertly, I'll likely never be able to compete on a decent scale on a regular timeframe. I simply don't do enough bird photography. I started purely as a landscape photographer - and my favorite bird photographs (or other wildlife) almost always incorporate them in a recognizable environment.
Hope this makes sense Robert - I don't disagree with your perspective, I'm just trying to venture out of the norm of what is expected of a wildlife photographer. Hope that makes sense:)

[Dave Taylor]

Hey Dave,
I am actually OK with the ducks but for me...a good portion of the RH side is blown/detailless as presented. May be an issue with compression...but I suspect that considering the specs (sunny 16 rule) it may be a B/C issue in PP'ing or something similar. Would love to tweak more of the layers out in PP'ing and my feeling is that they are there given the exposure. Re-post if you tweak it.

Hi Roman -
Thanks for the feedback. I think you are correct about the jpeg compression for the web being the culprit. The full image shows decent detail in Lightroom (it is mainly fog and VERY subtle outlines of trees on the right side of the frame - but there is some there). I'm not too concerned about the detail of the fog on the right side anyway - mainly the color of it and the subtle transitions. As you know, the current limitations on displaying images on the web will not allow fine detail in an image like this - so it's mainly the print that concerns me at this time. I wonder why, now that nearly everyone has a monitor capable of displaying milions of colors and a "fast enough" internet connection, that we don't have something better than sRGB as a standard. Even Adobe98 would be far better. Web safe colors??? Pphtahh... boo hissss:) Or perhaps a way to encode a wider gamut image along with an sRGB image into the same file - the coding would realize that the viewer had better viewing capability and load the wider gamut instead of the sRGB image. Should be possible.

[Dave Taylor]

What's the sunny 16 rule, Roman??

The "Sunny 16 rule" is a way of finding a base exposure on a sunny day. Using this rule, you can establish a exposure that will be quite accurate by setting your shutter speed to 1/your iso @ f16. As an example, if you were using iso 200 - you would have a base exposure setting of 1/200" (or the nearest speed - 1/250") at f16. An iso of 800 would give you 1/800" @ f/16. There are variations on this rule, for cloudy days and so on.

[Fabs Forns]

I like very much, even with the blown right. To me it looks foggy, not blown. Colors rock and I'm fine with the compo.
You do have a lot of fine bird images on our site, so what are you complaining about? :)

[Dave Taylor]

I like very much, even with the blown right. To me it looks foggy, not blown. Colors rock and I'm fine with the compo.
You do have a lot of fine bird images on our site, so what are you complaining about? :)

Thank you Fabs!:)
It's not that I'm "unhappy" with what I've produced, I just think I can contribute in a slightly different way. I look at images like yours, Alfreds, Roberts, Arts, and so many more - and feel like my images lack something. You (and the others I mentioned and plenty I haven't) capture such drama because of impeccable timing & action - so much feeling conveyed. I think my eagle images are some of my better bird images, mostly because I've had the most exposure to them. But many of my others feel simply too much like documentary work, and I strive for more. I want that same connection and feeling that I experience when I look at yours and the others. The only way I have been able to achieve that is to approach my subjects (the wild ones) and put them in the context of their environment. These images that I've been working on don't have the detail that the "typical" bird images carry, but for me - I feel something that has been rare lately with my more "documentary" work, a connection to not only the wildlife, but also to what I felt when I took the image. It's an added dimension that was unexpected but very welcome. After all, I was (and still am) a landscape photographer first - even though I've now produced many more wildlife images than landscapes. Such is the nature of the subject.
I'm not going to give up on the action shots, just recognize what draws me in more. Galen Rowell said something very applicable to this discussion. To paraphrase, "If I don't feel something special when I click the shutter, why would someone else feel it when they look at the print?". I shoot what I want, and hope others will appreciate it for what it is, my interpretation of a scene that I was blessed to witness.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Dave,
figured as much on the compression...and that subtle transition will make for a big impact so I feel you achieved what you were striving for....and thanks for the sunny 16 answer help.

[Paul Marcellini]

I like it, the right doesn't look blown on my monitor. You got just enough of the layers poking through to add some nice depth and the chosen comp does give a grand feel to the tiny ducks. Would look great big on canvas.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey dave and all,
Not to belabor the point.....but the re-post shows the jpeg histogram. Red channel spiked blown and the entire histogram clipped. It still is probably the jpeg compression......because judging your settings......they are correct or at the very least close to it!.......so nice job on the comp...for BPN......just a few PP tweaks. Here's a link to clipped yellows that has been discussed; http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...867#post256867
This was from Breezebrowser.

[Dave Taylor]

Just as a comparison Roman, here is the histogram off the master file in LR, after merging in PS.