Weekly Photo Challenge: Eerie

This weekend I spent some time at World Bird Sanctuary because they were hosting a Camera Day.  That is where they have some of their birds out of their cages so that you can get some nice photos in a more natural setting.  Here is a shot I got of a Great Horned Owl:

ISO 320 50mm 0ev f/4 1/800

The good news is that I had a great time.  The bad news is that I forgot my tripod.  While it doesn’t matter too much for this particular photo, I will tell you that I have a lot of photos that will be heading for the electronic trash bin.

As you can see, it was a pretty bright day.  I set my ISO pretty low but because of the dark wood colors I did not set it at 100, but 320 looked like it would work.  When I am shooting in this situation I almost always try to shoot bracketed exposures.  There are two reasons for this.  The first is that with light changing frequently in a wooded area, a bracketed exposure gives you more options per click of the shutter.  The exposure that would have worked a minute ago may now have changed.  Bracketing offers you some flexibility with the changing conditions. The second is I am almost always thinking of trying to make an HDR image out of a photo like this.  What you see above is HDR.  I really like bird images in HDR because in my opinion it really brings out the detail in their feathers.  I chose a low f-stop because I did want to blur out the background a bit.  I would like you to notice how well this bird blends in with its background, but I don’t want the background to compete too much with the bird.  Given that this owl is made to blend in with it’s environment, the balance between the subject and background can be a tough one.  Since the Great Horned Owl is often not seen but instead heard, you would be forgiven for thinking it was a bit eerie to suddenly hear it hooting.  I wouldn’t blame you for jumping a bit.

Eerie is the theme of the weekly photo challenge at WordPress and other entries can be found here.  Have you ever been startled by one of these birds? it’s happened to me more than once while out camping, in the dead of night of course!  Do you like this HDR version?  This is not my first time photographing the Great Horned Owl, here is another shot from last fall. Your comments are welcome below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: My 2012 in Pictures

ISO 800 50mm -0.33 f/16 1/400

ISO 125 4mm f/2.8 1/120

ISO 800 50mm 0.33ev f/1.8 1/640

ISO 500 135mm f/10 1/50

ISO 500 28mm f/22 1/125

ISO 100 50mm f/5 1/25

ISO 500 50mm f/4.5 1/125

ISO 500 90mm f/9 1/50

This is a gallery of some of my favorite pictures from my blog this year.  It is a response to this week’s photo challenge from WordPress.  A big thank you to everyone who has stopped by my blog this year!

Cheers!

Design in photos and paint

This week’s assignment in Design class was actually three items when it was all said and done.  You will see them below.  Two I did using photography and the third is a painting.  The assignment was this, create a microcosm in collage format.  Then translate that to black and white and as many shades of grey as you like.  We were also permitted to use one color if we chose.  First I made the collage.  I used many photos I had of birds, particularly owls, and then combined those with a picture of my older child.  A representation of part of that child’s world.  I made a black and white version and a color version to help me make the decision regarding the use of color in the final painting.  Here are the two collages:

Collage in color

 

Collage in Black and White

I used Aperture, CollageIt, and Photomatix when creating these.  CollageIt was a free app that I found at the App Store.  Using that I was able to combine the photos I had in mind from Aperture.  It is a pretty straightforward app.  If you are looking for a free, basic, app, it is those things, and it was very helpful for this project.  Then I made three version of the collage to put in Photomatix.  That was helpful in accenting the texture in the collage.  I created a color version and black and white, then put both back into Aperture for some final tweaking.

I decided that I liked the black and white version better.  I also decided that I wanted the final painting to be vertical instead of horizontal.  I used black white and five shades of grey.  Here is the painting:

Final painting

So, what do you think?  Have a favorite? question or comment?  leave them below in the comment section.

Cheers!

 

Great Horned Owl in Fall

I took this photo and then edited it using Photomatix:

ISO 800 50mm 0.33ev f/1.8 1/640

Unlike the Tawny Owl that I posted earlier this week, I was thinking I would do something a bit more artistic rather than realistic with this image.  So, this was a bracketed exposure that I combined in Photomatix, but then I put this version in the “painterly” setting.  I was looking to create something that really brought out fall colors. Once I was finished with that, I put it in Aperture and cropped, straightened, and sharpened it.

Here is one of the original images:

Cheers!

The Great Horned Owl Lens Comparison, Revisited

Last week I wrote a post comparing lenses using a great horned owl.  One of the comments left was that the viewer liked the 50mm shot better, but maybe I should crop it to look more like the 28-135mm photo.  That wasn’t what I was originally going for, but I thought it was a neat idea, and that is the point of reading the comments! 🙂

The person who left the comment is this blogger who in the post I have linked to explains his habit of “camping out” in other people’s blogs.  It is an interesting way of doing things, and he leaves great comments.

Here is the edited 50mm shot:

Here is the shot taken with the 28-135mm lens:

Which do you prefer?

Cheers!

Lens Comparison with a Great Horned Owl

I’m at it again with the lenses. Last week my model was a Bald Eagle this week I am photographing a Great Horned Owl.  Here with a 50mm lens:

ISO 100 50mm f/1.8 1/125

And here with a 28-135mm lens:

ISO 100 135mm f/5.6 1/6

My personal preference in this case is for the 28-135mm lens.  Does anyone prefer the 50mm lens shot?  Both pictures were taken using a tripod and custom white balance.  No post-editing work on either, aside from scaling the image.

Cheers!