Northwoods Wildlife...a ton o images.

[Jim Almquist]

What a excellent series Shawn!!!

Like how you caught the female Hairy lifting her leg. The Snowy shots are really sweet. The eyes pop and the whites are great. I like what you did with the NHO. The high contrast really makes it pop.

A lot of time in the field but the rewards are worth it!!!!

Thanks for sharing!

[ShawnZ]

Thankyou kindly for the views and thoughts. It is fun to share. How about some shorebirds...

Short Billed Dowitcher.

Pectoral Sandpiper.

Semi-Palmated Plover.

Semi-Palmated Plover.

Lesser Yellowlegs.

Bonapartes Gulls.

[Todd Caswell]

Very nice shawn, I have to ask what did you use "for food" to attract the Snowy?

[Canon Guy]

Wonderful! I can't say that I've ever seen a better series of images.

[ShawnZ]

Thanks for the response.

I used live mice, and the owl was fed. I would use seed or suet if they ate that, but they don't

A couple more recent images...

Yellow Rumped Warbler. In both images, MP3 call playback was used as an attractant. (One thing I have been discovering this year, is that birds will respond to playback, even when they are not on their breeding territory, or not even anywhere near it. They simply appear curious to me. I realize that bird's on territory are a different scenario.)

White Throated Sparrow. Food was used as an attractant.

Red Sqirrel. Food was used as an attractant.

Here is an example of a bird that responded to call playback, and the bird(s) were at least a few hundred miles south of their nearest breeding grounds. This image, similar to one I posted before, shows a black bellied plover. The image was made in early June, Duluth, MN.

last year. The species breeds in the arctic and Alaska. The gentleman that I was with, played the black bellied's call, and the birds started calling back right in front of us. Totally awesome! I realize that in the court of public opinion, every one has one.... As a side, I'm not suggesting that my views on interacting with birds and wildlife are "right" and someone else's are wrong because they may not agree with feeding birds or using calls etc...if it's ethically questionable for you, there's a reason, and you should listen to that inner voice

[captainshane]

Great shots Shawn!!! Lots of birds I haven't seen before.

[Melissa Neibache]

Great photos! The colors are wonderful

[MN Shutterbug]

Lovely ton.

[ccarlson]

Somehow I missed this post for the past couple weeks. Really great shots. Makes me want to go out and buy the sigma 50-500. Same guaranteed results, right?

Besides the excellent composition, there is some really nice color contrast and saturation, especially in some of the shallow water reflection shots. Would you mind sharing any post processing steps (maybe a before and after?) for those of us in the learning process?

ccarlson

[ShawnZ]

Hey ccarlson.

I'm still a neophyte in regards to post processing. For what it might be worth, I'll attempt to show what you asked for. I believe I may have posted this image on this site before, but possibly not...First and foremost, I shoot in RAW. I feel that I have more control over the outcome of the final image this way, especially in regards to exposure control. My in camera settings at the time of capture, in regards to contrast and saturation are set to 0. Sharpening is set to 0. After I open the RAW file, I will adjust the contrast, saturation, and exposure to the look I'm after.

So, here is an image of a foraging stilt sandpiper. This is full frame, straight out of camera, with nothing done except opening the file and resizing it for the web.

Now, with the program that I use to open the RAW file, I typically increase the contrast and saturation to taste and adjust the exposure if there are any blown highlights. (At the point of capture, I try and expose to the right hand side of the histogram, then darken the image during post process, because typically that will produce much less digital noise in the image versus underexposure and then lightening the image up). So here is the full frame image with adjustements to contrast and saturation while opening the RAW file.

Now I open the RAW file and work on it in Photoshop. Basically, I did just a few more steps with this image. I made a "levels" adjustment to increase the darkness of the image. I also increased the contrast a bit more to give the image some visual "punch". (This is something that I do "to taste". I don't have a formula or a well thought out way of approaching this process. I basically just know when the image looks like I want it to). Next I use the "straighten tool" in photoshop to adjust the ripple line of the water to make it look straight. (One of the hardest aspects of shooting low angled images that have water is keeping the horizon perfectly level...hard for me anyway). On this image, I also used the clone tool to get rid of the dust sensor spots...can you see them? Then I crop the image until the subject is the size in the frame that I want it to be. Then I resize the image, usually to 800pixels on the long side (keep in mind that this size is used for web use only, not for printing). Then I use USM to sharpen the image to taste. Here is the final image to use on the web. Hope that was helpful

[ccarlson]

Very Helpful. Thank you! I've been working in lightroom and more recently purchased ps elements but haven't enough time to dig into it. Your suggestions will come in handy.

ccarlson

[Hwood]

I sure like them owls. Everyone I came across this year had already been tagged and painted...