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Best of 2011 – Wildlife

Jan
14
2012
January 14, 2012
By 25 Comments

While looking through the 2011 photographs, I realized that I shot very few wildlife images last year. Part of it has to do with the fact that I was too busy testing equipment, but I also realized that I just did not get out locally as much as I used to in order to photograph birds and other wildlife of Colorado. A large number of great wildlife shots from Yellowstone and Glacier NP were lost during my two week trip across North-Western US as well, due to my own fault. All in all, 2011 was just not a good wildlife year for me. Hopefully I will do better in 2012. Enjoy!

Tricolored Heron

1) Tricolored Heron 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

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Filed Under: Digital Photography, Wallpapers, Wildlife Photography Tagged With: , , , ,

Case Study: Bird Photography

Aug
22
2011
August 22, 2011
By 21 Comments

I have finally been able to more or less clean up my mailbox and sort through most of the emails that keep pouring in from our readers. The case studies that our readers are sending have been piling up in my mailbox and my to-do list, so I will try to do a better job in posting these on the blog from now on. Let’s start with a case study from our reader Gaurav Rajaram, a bird lover and photographer from Bangalore, India. Here is what he sent me:

I use a Nikon 300mm f/4 paired with a Nikon D200 for my bird photography. While shooting, I notice that I do not get a clean background, which I would expect from a prime lens. I have got such a background in one image of mine, however, the subject is a little too soft for my liking (the picture is attached). Is there any way to get a clean background so as to help the viewers’ focus remain on the subject (the bird in this case)? Could you share a tutorial with us? I’m attaching sample images for this case study in JPEG format with full EXIF info.

And here are the two images Gaurav attached:

Bird with clean BG but too soft

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Yellowstone and Glacier Trip Photos

Jul
25
2011
July 25, 2011
By 15 Comments

Here are some photos that I decided to share with you from Yellowstone NP and Glacier NP from my trip across the Western USA. I have not done much processing on these yet, which I am hoping to do during the next few weeks. The images from Yellowstone NP are from the Nikon D5100 that I was testing – all images from my Nikon D3s were on the card that I unfortunately lost somewhere in Yosemite NP. All landscape images of Yellowstone are lost, so I only have some wildlife + wildflower shots to show.

While in Yellowstone, there was not a day when I did not see black bears. First day I was super excited about seeing a bear cub walk alone and eat flowers, so I took several hundred pictures of him eating, resting and playing. My favorite picture was with the cub sitting in between many wildflowers. Of course those pictures are all gone, so it is only a memory. During the next bear encounters, I only photographed when the bears were close. For the first couple of shots, I would use the Nikon D5100 and then switch to my D3s, due to better and more accurate autofocus. Here are some images of bears from the Nikon D5100 + Nikon 200-400mm f/4 VR combo.

This is a black bear that some call “Cinnamon” bear:

Yellowstone NP #1

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Local Hawks

May
1
2011
May 1, 2011
By 11 Comments

It has been a while since I photographed birds. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a local park to scout for some birds. Although I did not get a good opportunity to photograph small birds, I found a couple of hawks that were willing to somewhat cooperate. The first one let me watch him on an electric pole for a little, right before he dove down to get a dead rabbit:

Hawk #1

Too bad he turned the other way…would have been a nice shot. The rabbit was pretty heavy, so he did not make it very far. I guess food was scarce and he just decided to feed off the rabbit carcass. After a short while, he abandoned the carcass and went back to sit on a tree branch:

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Filed Under: Digital Photography, Wildlife Photography Tagged With: ,

Best of 2010 – Wildlife (Part 2)

Jan
23
2011
January 23, 2011
By 14 Comments

This is the second part of the “Best of 2010” for Wildlife series. The first part can be found here. If you are looking for the technical information on how these images were shot (shutter speed, ISO, etc), the information is preserved as EXIF data in each file. Lola and I specifically preserve EXIF data in all of our images, so that our readers could learn from us.

Roseate Spoonbills

1) Roseate Spoonbills 1920×1200 Widescreen Wallpaper

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Best of 2010 – Wildlife (Part 1)

Jan
21
2011
January 21, 2011
By 16 Comments

Before posting two more landscape wallpaper collections, I decided to publish some wildlife images from 2010. There will be two parts and this is the first one. Unfortunately, I did not do much wildlife photography in 2010, so I only have a few images to share. Please note that all of these were taken in a natural habitat and the wildlife was not disturbed or hurt during the process :)

Geese at Sunrise

1) Geese at Sunrise

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Eastern Meadowlark

Jul
28
2010
July 28, 2010
By 5 Comments

It took me a while to sit and wait in the car in Florida to get a good shot of this bird. The Western Meadowlark is pretty easy to spot and photograph here in Colorado – I can often get pretty close to them without scaring them away.

Eastern Meadowlark

Shot with Nikon D3s and Nikon 300mm f/4.0 AF-S lens in aperture priority mode, Auto ISO with Minimum Shutter Speed set to 1/1000th, f/10 for increased depth of field.

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Nikon 300mm f/2.8G VR II for Birding

Jul
25
2010
July 25, 2010
By 12 Comments

I’m currently testing the new Nikon 300mm f/2.8G VR II and doing as much bird photography as possible to see how it performs in various situations, especially with teleconverters. I received it a couple of weeks ago, but my schedule went hectic and I have not received the new Nikon TC-20E III, which I really wanted to test this lens with. The Nikon TC-20E III is nowhere to be found at the moment and I was able to get a copy by renting it through LensRentals.com for now. I also needed the TC-20E III to complete my Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II review and wanted to test it with all of my telephoto lenses after hearing so much about its great performance. The TC-20E III is arriving at the end of this week, so I am planning to get out and shoot as much as possible during the weekend and next week.

So far, I’m in love with the Nikon 300mm f/2.8G VR II. It is so sharp and full of contrast, that I don’t even see a reason to shoot it without teleconverters. The Nikon TC-14E II is unnoticeable on it and the Nikon TC-17E II performance is just superb – that’s what I have been shooting with and I am more than impressed with this setup. The TC-17E II makes the Nikon 300mm f/2.8G VR II a 510mm lens and the new VR system helps me keep the lens stable while hand-holding it. I do not have an arca-swiss mount for the lens yet, so I have not used a tripod once so far – only hand-held shots.

Burrowing Owl Chick

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Raptor Photography

Jul
23
2010
July 23, 2010
By 11 Comments

I really enjoy raptor photography, definitely much more than any other type of bird photography. Birds of prey are powerful, aggressive, fast, agile, precise and even at times ravenous, having no mercy on their targets. They are also tough to photograph and get close to, since most of them (especially adults) do not like people and their presence. I have been studying raptor behavior and habitat during the last 3 years and have traveled to various locations both in Colorado and in other states to see and photograph these beautiful creatures. In this article, I will show you some of the latest pictures and videos of predators I took during the last month and will give you a few tips on photographing raptors.

Red-tailed Hawk in Flight

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Filed Under: Digital Photography, Photography Articles, Wildlife Photography Tagged With: , , ,

Female Grackle

Jul
22
2010
July 22, 2010
By 7 Comments

Grackles are very common in Florida. During my last visit, while I was photographing birds near Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, a female grackle landed on a nearby bench and started showing off. At first, I did not pay attention, since I normally do not take pictures of common birds. But this one did everything it could to get my attention…it probably was asking for food, which it wouldn’t get from me anyway, since I don’t feed wildlife. After a short while, I turned my camera (Nikon D3s with Nikon 300mm f/4.0 AF-S + 1.4x TC) from the beautiful Roseate Spoonbills to the grackle and took a shot:

Female Grackle

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