After my two posts related to shooting through cages or fences (https://www.nikoncafe.com//forums/viewtopic.php?t=1196&highlight= and https://www.nikoncafe.com//forums/viewtopic.php?t=1198&highlight=), I thought I'd share a somewhat less successful shot.
This is a Laughing Kookaburra playing with its lunch. The bird battered its food around and shifted it back and forth in its beak for several minutes. Rather gruesome, I suppose, but that's nature for you.
The shot itself had several points of challenge. The bird was flying back and forth in the cage from stark sunlight to shade. The kookaburra was sitting on a high wooden perch where the angle of shooting was acute, and the fence was extremely apparent with the acute angle. Most annoyingly, every time I lined up a shot, the bird flew to another part of the cage !
As before, this was shot with a wide aperture, in fact, wide open for the lens used at f/4 .
The shot hasn't been post-processed at all, excepting the copyright, to show the effects of shooting through the the cage more clearly. I'll explain some steps that could be used below in no particular order. Each photographer would manage the image in a different manner.
The shot is uncropped and without any background post-processing in PSCS. If I were more ready with the Magic Wand, I might be able to use a significant Gaussian blur to make the artifacts in the background decrease. Alternately, some cloning efforts could be employed and then a blur applied.
Notice also that the body of the bird shows several blobs of off-yellow colour below the "collar". These are from sun splashes on the cage wires. There are several other areas where this occurs in the image. Again, these could be managed using PSCS.
The shot was performed at ISO400, as the bird was ducking into some deep shadows (and then out into the sun). A more processed image would be cropped, upsized as needed, and then the NeatImage plug-in would be applied to address some of the digital noise.
I'll place a touch of space here for our more squeamish viewers.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
D100, 200-400mm AFS/VR, ISO400, 1/4000s, f/4, exp. comp. -2.3 EV (bright sun!)
As you can see, it's not as successful an image as the other ones I posted. However, it's shot upward at about a 60 degree angle through black mesh fencing with sun. With a careful crop and some PSCS attention, it's a usable shot, if not a cover photo for Birder's World.
All part of the learning curve.
No matter what's put on the dinner plate in front of you, always shoot.
John P.
This is a Laughing Kookaburra playing with its lunch. The bird battered its food around and shifted it back and forth in its beak for several minutes. Rather gruesome, I suppose, but that's nature for you.
The shot itself had several points of challenge. The bird was flying back and forth in the cage from stark sunlight to shade. The kookaburra was sitting on a high wooden perch where the angle of shooting was acute, and the fence was extremely apparent with the acute angle. Most annoyingly, every time I lined up a shot, the bird flew to another part of the cage !
As before, this was shot with a wide aperture, in fact, wide open for the lens used at f/4 .
The shot hasn't been post-processed at all, excepting the copyright, to show the effects of shooting through the the cage more clearly. I'll explain some steps that could be used below in no particular order. Each photographer would manage the image in a different manner.
The shot is uncropped and without any background post-processing in PSCS. If I were more ready with the Magic Wand, I might be able to use a significant Gaussian blur to make the artifacts in the background decrease. Alternately, some cloning efforts could be employed and then a blur applied.
Notice also that the body of the bird shows several blobs of off-yellow colour below the "collar". These are from sun splashes on the cage wires. There are several other areas where this occurs in the image. Again, these could be managed using PSCS.
The shot was performed at ISO400, as the bird was ducking into some deep shadows (and then out into the sun). A more processed image would be cropped, upsized as needed, and then the NeatImage plug-in would be applied to address some of the digital noise.
I'll place a touch of space here for our more squeamish viewers.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
D100, 200-400mm AFS/VR, ISO400, 1/4000s, f/4, exp. comp. -2.3 EV (bright sun!)
As you can see, it's not as successful an image as the other ones I posted. However, it's shot upward at about a 60 degree angle through black mesh fencing with sun. With a careful crop and some PSCS attention, it's a usable shot, if not a cover photo for Birder's World.
All part of the learning curve.
No matter what's put on the dinner plate in front of you, always shoot.
John P.
Last edited by a moderator:
