American avocet chick hunting

You're used to water reflections that present a view as steady as a faithful spouse. Early morning at Yosemite's Tilden Lake, the Washington Monument in the Lincoln Memorial pool, and jagged peaks in Banff's Lake Louise are all good examples. Except on very windy days, you have a dramatic image in the right light.

Other opportunities are more fleeting, but give you a chance for something different. And there are a lot more of them.

Tilden Lake, Yosemite National Park

The key is previsualizing, and being ready. Place yourself to capture wild subjects with front-lighting or side-lighting. Long-legged waders and sandpiper-like birds have favorite spots to hunt, nest and raise young. So you can predict where they'll be.

One June morning, a friend's airline flight had me up before sunrise. So I went to Palo Alto Baylands to capture the action in the best light. Like many parks and preserves, rangers don't open the gates until 8AM. So I parked outside the gate, shouldered my gear, and walked in.

Winter visits gave me expansive sunrises in the marsh by Mayfield Slough. This morning's fog veiled the sun, and gave me a different opportunity.

The orange ball glowing in the fog looked like a big Japanese lantern. There were some interesting foreground evergreens and a bench for anchor points below it, so I tried a couple pictures. The fog cut the sun's intensity back enough to give an even exposure, so I was able to capture some foreground detail. But powerlines distracted as they crossed the sun.

So I looked for another way to capture it. The view at my feet was more promising.

Who Says 500mm Isn't A Landscape Lens?
I was ready for wildlife - the 500mm lens was on my EOS 1D mk II. But I liked the perspective compression I was seeing, the sun reflecting in marshwater between the pickleweed. I wanted good sharpness over a wide distance range, so I stopped down to f/18. This is a little beyond the f/16 diffraction limit for best sharpness with most lenses, using cameras with APS-sized digital sensors. But I counted on dim light and the Canon L-lens' quality to bail me out. And I really needed the depth of field.

The result was worth it. This is something you usually don't look for because you don't think of it as a classic reflection. But it's still pretty static, even though the sun moved out of the shot in just a few minutes.

Precocious Youngsters
On an earlier June morning, I'd watched young American avocets hunting in the marsh. The birds were to the northeast and backlit, and the sun rose enough to wash them out after awhile. As I was driving away, a parent and three chicks caught my eye in a more westerly view. So I parked again and set up in the new position.

I waited for youngsters to circle towards me in their never-ending hunt for mollusks and other food. With several birds, you can almost always capture good couples pictures.

It can be better to just suggest a presence with a reflection. I photographed a whole series of images as a chick walked through the reflection of its parent, since I wasn't 100% sure of which image would let both bird and reflection 'pop' out of the background.

Another chance came when the three chicks followed Mom into the marsh. Mom's reflection was all I needed for the family group idea.

Solo birds can present great reflections too. Avocets and black-necked stilts may spend several minutes in one spot just preening and stretching.

Or you might get a whole group sleeping late in early spring. Keep an eye out for straight-forward reflections like this one.

Quick And Dirty Photoshop For Great Images
You're sick of sloshing prints in trays in the wet darkroom. And your digital-savvy friends keep telling you to replace enlarger and easel with computer and mouse. Or you're wondering how you can transform your digital pictures into the near-perfect masterpieces you see in wildlife and environmental magazines.

But you're not sure how to get started. Picture-editing programs look so overwhelming. There are several to choose from. And how do you manage all those digital image files from your camera?

It's simpler than it looks. I made the journey into digital several years ago. I started with a 35mm film scanner and an early version of Adobe Photoshop. When I began, Photoshop was the only usable picture-editing program available, which made it the best. It still is the best - for tweaking your images to match what you saw when you squeezed the shutter.

There are a few Photoshop tricks to consider with almost every image you want to display or print.

Keep It In The RAW
Before anything else, you should be shooting in RAW format. RAW offers advantages even film doesn't. I use the Adobe Camera RAW plug-in to pre-process images in Photoshop. And a general hint - resist the temptation to yank the sliders all over the place! Radical adjustments usually just muddy up the image.

If you blow the exposure, RAW files let you fix it after-the-fact in Adobe Camera RAW (within a +/- 1 stop limit). Correcting underexposure can make the image 'grainy', especially at high ISOs. Exposure correction can also shift color balance unnaturally. So you're best off getting it right in the first place. But when you've got to have that cool, well-composed shot and you can't redo it, exposure-correcting RAW files is a lifesaver.

The next thing is a slight contrast enhancement. Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) starts images at a 25 contrast setting. A change to 45 or 50 can be just enough to darken the background slightly without blowing out the highlights. It can also increase color saturation. With this snowy egret at Palo Alto Baylands, I had to use 35 - a white bird is just asking for blown highlights.

If you see a color cast, you can correct that too. In White Balance, stick with the Cloudy, Shade and other presets first. If you don't like the effect of any of them, it's time to mess with the color Temperature slider. Just remember that lower numbers are 'cooler' (more blue), and higher numbers are 'warmer' (more yellow-red). You can pull the Tint slider around for mild corrections too.

I also go to ACR's Detail tab and adjust sharpness. With images taken at ISO 800 and lower, you can set sharpness to 75-80 without excessive sharpening of image noise, the digital realm's grain. You may see little difference with ACR's sharpening. If that's the case, leave it alone and click 'OK'.

Biggest And Easiest Bang For The Photoshop Buck
In Photoshop, you have many choices. I use these general rules:
  1. Layers are like custom darkroom masks. They stay separate while you work with the image, so you can change them later. That's why I do as much as possible with layers.
  2. Save the image in Photoshop format. That'll preserve detail without loss from compression, even though it makes big files. It also preserves all the layers. You won't tweak every image, only your very best shots. So you'll have just a few big files.
  3. Process with layers first. Then tweak shadow / highlight and anything else you can't do on a layer.
  4. Sharpen next to last.
  5. Use grain/noise-reducing plugins like Nik Multimedia's Dfine or Picturecode's Noise Ninja after everything else.

Simple Layers
With the image in Photoshop, the first thing to do is make a levels layer for a subtle enhancement of contrast and color. Click on the diagonal half-moon icon in the layers palette, and choose Levels.

The Levels box has lots of options. But keep it simple - click 'Options'. That brings up the Auto Color Correct Options box. Use the default clip levels, click 'Enhance Monochromatic Contrast', and most images will look great. This usually gives you a slight contrast enhancement. If there are any blown highlights, reduce the Highlights clip level below 0.1% to bring them back. Click OK. Then check the effect by selecting and unselecting the Preview checkbox. Like it? Click OK.

Some images may look even better with a bit more contrast. So click the half-moon again and choose Brightness/Contrast. Try a contrast setting between 5 and 10. But watch those highlights!

This egret ended up with blown highlights for even the smallest contrast enhancement, so I left it alone.

If you're still using an older dSLR like the original EOS 1D, EOS D30 or D60, your images may look a little pale. Click the half-moon again and choose Hue/Saturation. Most pale images look best with Saturation set between 12 and 20. Unless you want your pictures to look like old Peter Max posters, resist the temptation to go higher.

Have some hot highlights or dim shadow detail? Click the Image menu, choose Adjustments, and pick Shadow/Highlight. Photoshop gives you an initial 50% shadow brightening. Ignore it - move the Amount sliders for shadow and highlight until you like what you see. I don't use more than 5 for either amount setting to avoid an obvious flat, faded look.

Sharpen 'Em Up
Finally, it's time to sharpen. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the part of the image you want critically sharp, probably an eye. I zoomed on feather textures around the egret's eye. Make sure you've clicked on the background in the layers palette to activate it. Otherwise, nothing will work. Click on the Filter menu along the top, and choose Sharpen. Then you'll have four more choices. Pick Unsharp Mask.

There are more settings in the Unsharp Mask box. Set Radius to 1.0 pixels and threshold to 0 pixels. Then you can mess around with the Amount slider. I keep this below 100%, though I've used 125% for images with so-so sharpness. A good compromise value is 70% - but check the noise in the out-of-focus areas. If it's too much, reduce the Amount. Is it bearable? Click OK.

Grain Eraser
And the last thing - noise reduction. Nik Multimedia's Dfine is the noise-reducing plugin I use. Think of it as a grain eraser, something you would have liked when you were printing an underexposed Tri-X negative. You can get at most noise reducers from the Filters menu. Dfine allows adjustments for luminance and chrominance noise, contrast, and color cast / balance. Photoshop's layer adjustments for contrast and color balance are plenty for me, so I only use the noise adjustments.

You can see the effect in Dfine's preview window. Click on the +/- icon above the previewed image to get the magnification you want. Then pull the image around to find an area that shows both out-of-focus background and in-focus subject. You'll need to look at both to judge the effect.

Set Dfine's Luminance Noise to Print Optimized, Normal Noise for most images from recent digital SLRs. Images at 200 ISO or lower usually don't need more than a noise reduction strength of 4. You might want more for ISO 400 and higher. The maximum 10 strength can make faces look like smoothed-out claymation models - it's usually a bit much. But it sure smoothes the background!

Here's a Dfine shortcut - click on the ratio numbers to get a closeup, 1:1 image preview.

Set Dfine's Chrominance (color) Noise & Artifacts to Global Reduction for images from recent digital SLRs. Set the chrominance noise level slider to 4 or 5 for images in the ISO 400 range. If there's a lot of shadow noise, use a higher setting. Not much chrominance noise? Use 2 or 3, or turn it off. Then click OK.

What does chrominance noise look like? Older Canon digital SLRs used to leave unsightly green and purple speckles in shadow areas at most ISOs. Some older lenses like the Leitz Telyt 400mm and 560mm give you image lines with green, red or other-colored edges, especially towards the outside of your images. Noise plugins can correct most of these problems.

Chrominance fringing
with 400mm Telyt

And that's it! Crop if you have the resolution and think it strengthens the image, and you're ready to save in Photoshop format and print!

The Digital Shoebox - Filing Images
Photoshop's file browser is a great way to preview a bunch of images. But it's a lousy image management tool. In the next newsletter, I'll show you a much better image filing and management tool - DigitalPro.

I've distilled much of what I've learned photographing wildlife up close into a downloadable eBook. Now you can have my field experience on-call whenever you like with Wildlife: Stealth Approach for an Intimate View. Click for a free preview!

I'm very quiet and people-shy. I hang out in the woods with my buddies, eating seeds and insects. I'm mostly gray so I blend in well. Who am I?

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