Bird Watching: Starting Bluebird thread Number 3, 1 by 2dCousinDave

2dCousinDave wrote:
No I do not shoot in raw. I generally shoot several hundred images at a time, and it takes so long for a 10MB file to load from the camera to the computer that I prefer to shoot in large jpeg. I guess I am simply too impatient.

I usually crop my pictures 100 percent to bring the subject in closer and maybe I might sharpen some of them a little, but other than that I do not edit them. Rarely if ever do I use Photoshop. The plain background effect is created because the camera is so close to the bird and the depth of field of the telephoto lens is so shallow that whatever is more than 20 feet or so behind the bird is blurred beyond recognition. On rare occasion I may clone something distracting like bird droppings from the foreground, but no picture that I have posted on this forum has ever had the background removed in Photoshop. The lens takes care of that.

In this picture of a male fledgling, for example, you see two shades of green. The sun is shining on the grass on the lower left. The right side is in the shade, so it is darker. The lighter area above and to the bird's left is a house about 200 feet beyond the bird, also in the shade.

Dave

This message was edited Mar 2, 2008 2:07 AM