March 30, 2013 - Lately I’ve been hand-holding the Beast a lot, so that I can lie down and photograph birds at eye level. This technique has been paying off well with the Sandhill Crane babies (more on that tomorrow!) To see what I’m talking about, look at the two images below. The first was taken while I was […]
December 9, 2011 - Lately I’ve been frustrated by my flash not firing, or firing incorrectly. For example, when I first saw the male Painted Bunting at Circle B Bar Reserve, the flash over-fired and I got a completely white image. Not exactly what I was expecting! I know the off-camera flash cords are finicky, but mine is fairly […]
October 21, 2011 - I photographed this White-Eyed Vireo this weekend on the Alligator Alley trail of the Circle B Bar Reserve. I used fill flash to illuminate him deep within a tree. I recently started training myself to use a new technique for focusing on these little birds who love to flit in and out of small trees. […]
September 22, 2011 - Lately I’ve been playing with Photomatix and HDR. I went back to a sunrise panorama that I did at Lake Hancock at the Circle B Bar Reserve. Each portion of the panorama was bracketed for HDR. When I first processed it with Photoshop, I did the HDR on each frame individually, taking care to apply […]
September 19, 2011 - This sunrise HDR image was created at the Circle B Bar Reserve on Saturday morning. I had already taken so many shots of the sunrise and the sun was pretty high in the sky. But before I switched to the Beast for bird shots, I took one final shot of the sun and surrounding clouds. […]
September 7, 2011 - Recently I’ve been noticing quite a bit of dust on my DSLR sensor. It’s especially apparent at small apertures (like f/22 and up). One spot was so big that it left a big black blob at the bottom of each of my shots. Others were smaller and less noticeable, but I was still spending a […]
August 31, 2011 - This is my last post about our Callaway Gardens vacation in Georgia this month. We had a great time photographing hummingbirds, songbirds, warblers, butterflies, and turtles at the beautiful gardens in Pine Mountain (about a hour southwest of Atlanta). But we stumbled upon my favorite photo from the whole trip rather unexpectedly. It was mid-day, […]
August 24, 2011 - The weather has been so hot that I’ve been spending less time outside and more time playing with post-processing. I’ve rediscovered HDR recently when I began experimenting with Photomatix Pro instead of Photoshop for HDR. I’d always read that Photoshop wasn’t quite as good, and now I’m starting to see why. Here’s my HDR image […]
August 22, 2011 - Friends often ask why our website is called “catandturtle” when most of my photographs are of birds. Well, I’ve always been a cat lover, and Rich has grown up with an obsession for turtles. Actually, it was our cat Goldilocks who started watching birds, and got us interested in them… So when I come back […]
July 20, 2011 - Last November, I submitted a Sandhill Crane colt image for publication in our MFC Spirit magazine at work. I watched and waited, but it didn’t appear in the magazine, and I thought it hadn’t been selected. Then yesterday people started congratulating me for my picture — and after seeing it in print, I thought, “wow! […]
July 6, 2011 - While shooting at the Viera Wetlands this weekend, I enjoyed watching some Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks landing on palm tree stumps. There was potential for beautiful background bokeh with the green trees in the distant background. At first I stood to photograph, which gave me this kind of picture: Then I realized that the background wasn’t […]
May 29, 2011 - 2019 Update: This was my workflow in 2011. Now I use iMovie on a Mac computer and upload the videos to Vimeo, which displays them nicely on both PCs and Macs over a variety of browsers. I’ve had a couple of people ask me recently how I do my videos on my webpage. So I […]
April 11, 2011 - There have been around 10 Wood Storks hanging around Stoneybrook West for the past week or so. I’ve photographed them in varying lights, which will illustrate the “Goldilocks” photography principle (posted today in honor of Goldy’s 9th birthday!) The first time I saw the storks, it was the middle of the afternoon. The light was […]
January 8, 2011 - Join Us for a Nature Hike at the Circle B Bar Reserve. Bring your DSLR, your point-and-shoot, or just yourself, and join us for a morning’s walk at the Circle B Bar Reserve. My dad and I will share some of our favorite birding locations and photography tips. Meet outside the Nature Discovery Center on […]
December 2, 2010 - Mum-mum gave me three Paper White bulbs as a birthday present. I planted them a few weeks ago and they are already blooming! I couldn’t resist pulling out the extension tubes and taking some close-up pictures of the first flowers. Someone was asking me the other day about why you should pay attention to the […]
November 13, 2010 - I’ve had some people asking me why I get up at the crack of dawn to go to Circle B. The answer is “to get there during the great morning light.” So what’s so great about morning light? Compare and contrast the following two pictures. Both feature a Greater Yellowlegs, taken yesterday morning on Heron […]
October 18, 2010 - I’ve often wondered how the image quality would be if Dyeyo and I were to stack our teleconverters. I got the opportunity to do an experiment yesterday at the Circle B Bar Reserve. We had seen an adult Bald Eagle flying over the marsh several times, and it finally settled in a treetop all the […]
October 13, 2010 - Somebody asked me this weekend why I bother to use flash outside. After all, the sun is up and there’s plenty of light, right? What I explained is that fill flash can be useful, even outside in bright sunlight. For one thing, bright sunlight tends to create harsh shadows, and a bit of fill flash […]