Flower and Bee at Bleu Lavande Fitch Bay, Quebec Canada

Checking the metadata of this image revealed that I used the 18-200mm a (relatively) cheaper lens that came with my camera. It has a different bokeh than my 70-200mm lens which I also had with me. Bokeh refers to the quality of the out of focus portions of the image. Compare it to the bokeh in the two previous images that I created while at the San Diego Zoo which employed the 70-200mm lens. I'm still not done with this image. I'm going to try softening it with noise reduction and see what happens. PLEASE CLICK ON THIS IMAGE TO VIEW AT FULL QUALITY!

Exotic Bird San Diego Zoo San Diego, CAL

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it's all about the eyes. When I brightened his eyes in postproduction I realized why he posed so graciously. I suspect that he has cataracts! This was shot using an aperture of f/8 which should be a medium to shallow depth of field. The reason that it appears so shallow is because I was right on top of him. This blurs the background thereby separating the subject from it. That aperture is also in the best quality range of the lens which is about two stops from wide open.

Prairie Dog San Diego Zoo San Diego California

This image was created during a session at the San Diego Zoo with nature photographer, Laurie Shupp.
She is truly amazing. Do yourself a favor and visit her website: www.imagesbylaurie.com/
The most important thing that I learned from her is that, like all portraits, it's all about the eyes. This little guy had very shaded eyes. His eye details were brightened using a NIK Software control point. Again the NIK Software suite saves the day.

Autumn Delight Westmoreland, NH

The orange tree would be lost in this forest image if not for the contrast in tone and complementary color. This is another example of backlighting that causes the subject to glow.

Tunbridge Worlds Fair Tunbridge, VT

In order to create slightly more contrast and reduce distracting elements, portions of the image have been selectively darkened such as the people in the background. This is another example of checking the perimeter of the image for distracting elements. The blurred hands and feet add a sense of motion, yet this image wouldn't work if his face wasn't sharp.  Notice the effect of the backlighting.
I plan on removing the feet in the background and then doing a before/after comparison to illustrate how an image can be improved by removing distraction elements. This is also an example of how many times you can use the words "distracting elements" in a single paragraph.

Hay Rake Milton Farm Museum Milton, NH

This hay cutter which had been sitting in a field at the Farm Museum in Milton, NH seemed to have been prominently displayed like a piece of agricultural sculpture. I often stopped to photograph it, but had the most fun employing this technique that was taught to me by renowned photographer Tony Sweet. Google him to see some of the most creative methods of composition. This particular technique involved zooming from a long focal length to a shorter one during a long exposure. To reduce your shutter speed for the long exposure try using a combination of low ISO, narrow aperture, or adding a neutral density filter to your lens. This actually employed a polarizing filter later in the evening allowing me to use a wide aperture of f/2.8. That helped to separate it from the background. A slight pause during the exposure before zooming will help define the subject. Otherwise it just looks like the screen on the Starship Enterprise at warp speed.

Fence and Blue Flowers Portsmouth,NH

Don't be afraid to be creative! These brilliant blue flowers made much more of an impact when viewed through this contrasting fence. Otherwise, to me anyway, they just appeared to be another piece of landscaping. This also allowed me to exaggerate the beautiful blue by slightly bumping up the saturation. Normally this would be way overdone, but the fence serves to tone it down a bit.

Bronze Door at Hope Cemetery Barre, VT

This post is more about location than technical matters.  Good images can be created anywhere. I have often found that less travelled places such as remote railroad tracks, cemeteries, abandoned factories, etc. offer great opportunities. The Hope Cemetery in Barre, VT is one of my favorite locations. It is full of art.

Blackhawk Boy Portsmouth Air Show Newington, NH

Can you just hear this little guy saying "COOL DAD! Can we get a Blackhawk? PLEASE!!!!" This is one of those critical moment images where your see the reaction from someone and just keep shooting. This is the time to be using aperture priority mode and have your ISO all adjusted and ready to go. I got off about three shots with Dad obscuring my shots, but I just kept firing until I got this one. This is one of my favorites out of over 900 images that I did at the Portsmouth Air Show in Newington, NH. It's all about telling the story.

Thunderbirds dart to the Sun Portsmouth Air Show Newington, NH

I went into detail in my last post with a very similar image of the Thunderbirds flying into the Sun and it's technical concerns. The only thing that I would like to add is that these guys are real vertuosi. There was no manipulation of the elements of this image other than those mentioned in the previous post.

Thunderbird supernova Portsmouth Air Show Newington, NH

Normally we try to avoid lens flair (those little orbs and glare) in an image by using a lens hood that provides shade for the front element of the lens. Often lens flair will wash out all contrast in an image and require significant levels or curves adjustments in Photoshop in order to save the image.
However in this case it added an significant creative element to the image that I found appealing. This dramatic effect was enhanced by bumping up the saturation and vibrance. Saturation/vibrance is like tabasco sauce, a few drops make a glorious gumbo. Any more gets overdone very easily. This rule applies to sharpening images as well.

Stunt Air Team Portsmouth Air Show Newington, NH

I never thought that I would admit this, but I adjusted the tones to simulate a high dynamic range (HDR) image. OK hear me out. The complaint by many people about HDR photography is that it is gaudy, hyper-saturated, over the top, lacking subtlety, crass...(and these are the kind words). I happen to be one of them. However, this technique can be useful using the more recent software versions. I will post some tone mapped images using HDR eventually.
You be the judge. Google Trey Ratcliff's "Stuck In Customs" website and look at some of his HDR images. You'll love it or hate it.
That being said...this image is not HDR. I merely took this low contrast image and exaggerated the tonal adjustments to get the silhouette of the aircraft and the smoke trails better defined in order to separate them from the clouds. Without that adjustment this image was just dead on arrival.

Jet Engine Portsmouth Air Show Newington, NH

This is one of those rare occasions when I'm not even tempted to adjust the image as captured by the camera. I didn't even do a black and white conversion. (Yes, this is a color image.) Because the engine cowling was shading this turbine and bright sunlight was reflecting off the fairly distant runway, the exposure couldn't have been any better. Normally, I would have recommended using NIK Silver Efex Pro black and white conversion software. It is simply the best and worth every penny.

shaded by a Galaxy Portsmouth Airshow Newington, NH

There are a lot of subtle and not so subtle alterations to this image. The actual subject in this image is the older couple contrasted by the mammouth C5 Galavxy. In order to draw attention to them I applied a local increase of their brightness using a Nik software Viveza control point and reduced the image's global brightness by using a very low opacity vignette. The vignette technique limited the shading to all but the couple.
Not so subtle devices were used to remove all traces of an air show such as litter, stray people, baby carriages, and barricades.  The real artistry came into play when the wheels had to be reconstructed. For this I made use of a combination of Photoshop CS5's brush, cloning, spot healing brush, and content-aware tools. In parts of the image the content-aware tool performed miracles. In other parts it just couldn't get the job done.

Thunderbirds mirrored Portsmouth Airshow Newington, NH

To get this shot the shutter speed is set quite high (the easy part) and the shutter is released in burst mode which creates a quick series of shots. Beware that the images are immediately stored in the cameras cache and read slowly onto the flash card at the rate that the card is capable of reading them. Once the cache is full, you cannot capture any more images until the cache has been read onto your card allowing more room for images to be captured. Shooting jpeg instead of RAW files speeds up this process, but I prefer to shoot RAW unless it gets to be a problem.
Also, I find that when shooting panning shots with a long lens (70-200mm f/2.8) I get lots of stability by cradling the lens with my left hand very near the lens hood and panning at the waist. This required shifting my feet just as the subject passed this critical point, but it didn't seem to matter.

2 generations of fighter aircraft Portsmouth Airshow Newington, NH

These aircraft actually were close together. I imagine that the mustang was going full throttle while the jet was holding back quite a bit. The original image was very low contrast due to the lighting conditions. After testing various modifications to the tones I realized that a simple silhouette was in order here. There was no point in trying to get more tonal variation in the two aircraft using fill light and other Photoshop techniques.   The only technique that satisfied me was a slight crop and bumping up the saturation.