Last week Alan and i got to attend one of Alan Murphy's workshops down in South Texas. It was incredible! The first two days were freezing, literally - there was snow on the ground (we were told it had been 60 years since the last time it snowed) and the second morning there was a thin layer of ice on the branches.
Alan M. showed us how he set up his perches and talked about the various things we need to consider when we try to do our own - and then set us down to shoot. There were both largish birds like green jays and small birds like Titmice coming in - and I was getting pretty frustrated because I always seemed to have the 1.4 tc on when the big birds were there, and off when there were only small ones. At one point - Alan M. suggested that if the subject was too large for the lens, to take multiple frames and stitch them together in photoshop afterwards. and I pretty much just laughed at the idea i would think to do that.
the "Ah Hah!" moment hit when these two cardinals landed on this frozen branch and there was no way I could get the whole thing in the frame. So I quickly took pictures of the top and bottom birds and just hoped that i could do something with it.
Yesterday I picked 2 of the possible images, processed them the same in LR and pulled them into CS5 and stitched them together - discovered that I had chopped the top off the perch, so had to pull in a third one. Its a huge file. Ended up cloning out a few random bits of greenery and the end of one branch that traveled out of the frame. Ran noise reduction on the background, resized it for web , and ran unsharp mask on the birds and perch a few times.
The head angle and attitude of the two birds aren't perfect, they look pretty irritated with each other, but I was so excited to see what he had said to do - actually work!
canon 7d, 300 f2.8 + 1.4 tc at 420 mm. ISO 800, 1/160 sec at f/5.6, aperture priority, tripod. Birds came to a feeder that is off to one side.
thank you for looking, appreciate any comments and suggestions for improvement.
Looks great Pat, love the interaction, and nice job putting it all together. You guys have really been getting some good education lately and you can see it is paying off. Look forward to seeing more from you and Alan.
HI Pat - lots to like here - though some will no doubt suggest this is a Digital creation - just depends on your point of view - I have no problems with this when (as you have) it is disclosed - if it is not disclosed - well that is a different matter.
You have pulled all three elements together nicely and whilst you mention about the HA'S - i feel that two perfect HA'S might be a little less believable than what you have here.
Like the composition and the frozen branches - Only thing I would do is to have a look at your histogram...
The only thing I would add to what has been said is that since you have processed them together (nice job) I might be tempted to remove some of the branch that merges with the top birds head.
I love the interaction between the 2 birds. I think the HA's have a lot to do with that interaction and don't have a problem with them at all.
Nice job on the stitch as well. If you hadn't mentioned it, I don't know that I would have been able to tell it wasn't a single image.
I'm curious to see where Lance is going with the histogram suggestion. I'm at work right now so I don't have access to anything to take a look myself.
thank you all for commenting! really appreciate it!
Brendan, loved these classes - and you are right - boy have we learned a lot in them! Now comes the question of how much we retain when we are out on our own.
Jon, I thought about cleaning out behind the upper bird's head but didn't do it. I think i'll try just for fun.
Lance - I've attached the histogram. the overall exposure is more to the left than it should be? but nothing is blown or blocked? - I did not want to go above ISO 800 - but that may be carryover from the D300, I should do more experiments with the 7D to see how the noise works. I could have opened up more, but was worrying about dof. Please tell me what you see, and what you would have shot at? really appreciate your help. by the way - i was blowing the reds on the cardinals sometimes and the light shining on the ice, so i was trying to avoid that too.
my husband Alan suggested that perhaps it is that the histogram is too steep and narrow, and for presentation could be spread out more but didn't know if that would flatten the image - I went into LR and played a little, but don't know what is the best way to experiment with that - adding black and exposure? increasing brightness and adding black? i wasn't doing it right - I quickly got strange reds.
by the way - another life saving moment from Alan Murphy ---- I was having all kind of problems with my camera the first day, compounded with shaking from the cold so much that i was fumbling pushing buttons. When i pulled the pictures into LR I discovered i had messed up settings massively (what in the world is Normal mode? not aperture or manual or shutter, Normal?) and i thought i had totally lost an entire session from the workshop. Alan M said to go down to the bottom of the Develop window in LR and try different Camera Profile settings - the default was Adobe Standard and the reds and blues had no detail, and were just weird. Changing that to Camera Faithful or Camera Neutral and suddenly there was detail in the intense colors, and those colors were more realistic. didn't fix all the problems but definitely improved things a lot.
I do not see the issue of 'digital creation' in how you took this photo. This was the image in front of you and the fact that it took two frames to compleat the picture seems inconsequential.
This is really lovely, Pat. Wonderful interaction between the birds. I agree with Tom - one frame or multiple frames stitched together doesn't matter to me - you have an image of what you saw.
I think you did an excellent job in post production, Pat! I would definitely remove the one branch behind the bird's head...love the rest of the set up!
For me, there is a blue cast to the reds in the image and there are areas where the reds are losing detail...is that maybe what Lance is hinting at?
hey Julie, I was unable to resist saying that they were blue from the cold, but also went back and carefully looked at what you said, and what I saw in LR - posted a new thread with a new picture showing the results.
thank you everyone for your comments and input - the help and critiques that are offered here are wonderful!
South Texas Cardinals
but definitely improved things a lot.
