Bobolink in the Fog

[John Haig]

Foggy morning on the ranch yesterday. I set up the pop up blind more or less to observe on of my kestrel boxes to try and determine if the young have hatched. It happens to be in the middle of the bobolink colony, and within 10 minutes I had half a dozen birds going about their business. What I really need is to set up a remote camera outside the blind to get a picture of the birds perching on it...today I had 2 bobolinks, a starling, and a snipe.

Camera Model: Canon EOS 40D (tripod mounted)
Shutter speed: 1/800 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure mode: Av
Exposure compensation: +2/3
Metering mode: Evaluative
ISO: 640
Lens: EF300mm f/4L IS USM +1.4x
Focal length: 420mm

[Harshad Barve]

excellent pose , lovely techs and good looking bird , beautiful image
TFS

[Harold Davis]

nice bycatch, john!!! those are great looking birds. never seen one in the wild. i like the pose and perch. looks great!

[Wheeler McDougal Jr.]

John- an extrodinary exposure. I attempt to get this bird in Wyoming every summer an have never done as well. Unfortunately I have only had a full sun opertunity and it is so easy to burn out the whites and yellows. You exposed this just right. Even the black on black eye is well exposed. I wish it were mine.

[John Chardine]

One of my favourite birds John! We have a few local, reliable pairs. I like the way you have captured the bird grabbing several grass stalks as a perch. Maybe that's why they have such long toe-nails. Lovely BG and pose. I would try a couple of things. Maybe a bit off the top would be in order, and I would try to open up the blacks a little which look pretty dark on my calibrated monitor. I use a non-destructive technique for this. Create a new layer Layer->New->Layer and choose Overlay for mode and check the fill with 50% grey. Then to open up blacks paint over with a soft white brush with opacity set to about 15%. Use a black brush to tone down the highlights. Apologies if you know this technique already. Others may not.

[John Haig]

Thanks all..
Wheeler, you make me envious that you've spent that much time in Wyoming...I guess then old plum "and the skies are not cloudy all day" holds true.
John, I will give that a shot...I've used that technique for landscapes many times in the past, it's a great one. What do you use for calibration? My old CRT was quite easy to eyeball with Adobe Gamma but the LCD I've used for the past few years ( a Dell built with the same components as the Apple LCDs according to the reviews/specs I read) tends towards being too bright...the colors come out a very near match in print but I have to continually monkey with the brightness of images.