Question for Mr. Tom Wilson

[Wirenut]

First of all, your pictures are amazing, are you a professional photographer?, and also what camera are you shooting to get those in flight duck shots? I apologize if you have discussed this before, I just pop in once and awhile to look at the photos while visiting this site.

[Tom Wilson]

Wirenut,

Am I a professional? NO! Am I a very serious amateur that has been published and sells his work frequently? Yes. I have been doing photography for about 9 years now, and started selling my work after only two. I spent a lot of time doing Horse shows last year and made a fair chunk of change, but it's the nature photography that stirs me, and that is what I prefer to do. There's not a lot of money in it though, as it becomes tougher and tougher to get published, and since the advent of digital the market it's getting even tougher. I shoot film with a Nikon F5, and I shoot digital with a Nikon D70. My long lenses are third party Sigma lenses. They are not prime glass, but they are acceptable for many images. They are good, they're just not great(fast and sharp). If your willing to do it though, and I'm proof of that, you can get great photos even with less than great glass. I am very proud of my photos, and I appreciate every nice word that has ever been said about them by the people who look at them. It is my personal goal however to become better each day. One day Maybe I'll sell all kinds of my work, but for now I do what I can, and I enjoy the snot out of it.

Thanks,

Tom W

[jonny_redhorse]

I'm certainly in agreemnt with you Tom...my "equipment" certainly isn't"top shelf" by any means but I get much personal satisfaction of getting good quality photos out of the camera and lenses I have at the time...I wish I owned a "sigma"(next on the list down the road who know's when)...I'm certainly relatively new to the nature photo thing but(actually just this last spring did I really start into it)...I guess I derive a lot of satisfaction venturing out on weekends never knowing what one will come across on that days outing!..Ive learned alot this past summer and the photography has brought me much closer to nature itself...one notices the "details" more in what's out there as opposed to "just being in the woods"....(I'm finding after a day in the "field" I can hardly wait to get back to the computer and download the photos to see how and what pics I took!...lol!)my next camera will have "image stabilization"...a great help when using full zoom for the obvious reasons...and a faster"start up time"(a must for the quick reactions of wildlife )and a few more megapixels(mine's only a 3.1 but certainly quite adequate)I think i'm going to stay with the "Fuji"..because I've already invested in more storage cards"xd" that only are used in the fuji...and familiar with all the functions plus the lenses are 55mm and don't want to start over again purchasing everything all over again...as for selling a photo, I had a women from massachusetts e-mail me wanting to purchase a photo and was willing to pay a "my price" whatever that may be ...guess it's to a point where one could get more "serious" for sure!...at any rate.I'm having fun!.the bottom line ...guess I just love nature photograhy...jonny

[Tom Wilson]

Jonny,

You're right on man...It's no different than hunting, fishing, or any kind of sports. What a person gets out of their passion is the reason we do what we do. I love to hunt and have been doing it since I was a kid, but I am getting to the point in my life now that I almost prefer the camera. We had a group of three mallards come in the other morning (that after they met they're maker) I regretted not getting them with the camera instead. The way they came in flipping and backpeddling over the closest dekes would have been spectacular on film. (I only regretted it till they came off the grill).

Our memories are all we have left of the days we spend in the field, and to have some of those memories on film is awesome.

Good points man..

Tom Wilson

[polarsusd81]

I too am a huge fan of the work of both Tom Wilson and Jonny Redhorse. I would consider myself to be an experienced amateur as well and my main focus is nature photography. It is the best hobby I can imagine having, and one that will be with me for life. I shoot a digital rebel and do not have the best glass either, but like you guys said, satisfaction is in the eyes of the beholder. Take a peek at this photo from the other night and let me know what you think. I know its not a bird photo, but it is a new favorite.

[Dan Thiem]

Nice job polar. I like reflection shots!

[jonny_redhorse]

great photo you have there..Polar...very nice tranquil, colorful scene....be looking for more of your photos in the future.......jonny

[Tom Wilson]

Very nice fall scene Polar. I am not the best at landscape shots, but I have a couple. As stated above, this photo has a very nice tranquility to it and the reflections are gorgeous.

I do not mean this as a critique, but I would love to see what this photo would look like if you increase the brightness and played with the saturation levels just a bit.

Hopefully, you will be posting more photos soon.

Great job,

Tom W

[jonny_redhorse]

I was looking at your photo....Polar... and I added a different "spin" colorwise to the photo ....amazing what a photo program can do to a pic and yet it's the same photo....guess it's why I love nature photography also...both versions are "equally" nice....just different...fun playing with the colors...jonny

[Dan Thiem]

Well Johnny, it sure brightens things up a bit. You made something good even better.

[polarsusd81]

Jonny,

I do have Photoshop CS2, but it was a really recent purchase and I am still pretty new to editing them, how did you get the coloration so much warmer? Was that using a warming filter, or did you actually adjust the color levels. I would really like to learn how to use CS2 and use it well. I think I need to pick up a book.

Tom

[Tom Wilson]

Huh! It looks like Jonny was bored too. I don't want to insult or dooubt your intelligence with the computer, but I wanted to show you what I was talking about as well...

Here's the original you posted

Here's my rendition or a quick attempt at it anyways--this photo has a lot of potential to be very striking...

I boosted the contrast slightly, added a little USM, cloned out the trash on the water, and adjusted the brightness slightly. Digital photography has as much to do with the computer as it does the camera. You have to have a good start photo, but you can do amazing things with them during post processing. Hope you like it.

Tom W

[hanson]

Hmmm.... Photoshop??

If not, I need to find a new image manipulation program.

I would have guessed brightness/contrast adjustments, rubber stamp tool (clone), sharpness filter, and maybe a color balance adjustment.

Am I close?

[Tom Wilson]

Hanson,

I have photoshop 6 & 7, but they take quite a bit longer to use for me. I actually made my adjustments with Paint shop pro 9. Yeah, that's all I did to the photo--made a big difference, but I was just playing with it. Polar will be more than capable to do this once he learns his Cs2 software, unless of course this was the way he wanted it.

Tom W

[Steve Foss]

Any of the basic photo manipulation programs can do what was done to this photo. There's no need for someone to go out and spend $500 to $600 on CS or CS2 unless they really need a high-powered photo toning system. Where the latest versions of Photoshop shine is in the subtle and not so subtle added features they allow a person to perform.

All I did was take the image Tom toned and use the curves feature in CS (drag down from Image, then select adjustments, then curves. By dropping the level of the black/shadow by using curves, it brought out all the detail in the portion of the image that was in heavy shadow. Then I just bumped contrast slightly and the image is what you see below. Is it better? That's up to each individual eye. Some might say the shadows added to the drama. Some might like this version better.

[polarsusd81]

Steve, that looks great. And thanks by the way for the link for the batteries, I already received them and they way outperform my old ones. I really like the way your edited version looks.

And fortunately, I didn't have to spend that much on CS2, I was able to get the upgrade, but yes, it is still an expensive purchase. I don't think it is for everyone, but I plan to learn a lot more about it and use it pretty extensively in the future. I look forward to being able to contribute more photos in the future and thank you all for the help and support.

Tom

[Dan Thiem]

You camera guys never cease to amaze me. Keep up the awesome work.

[jonny_redhorse]

Tom...I used my old photo shop "elements" program and also in unison with "picasa"...picasa's fast for quick photo alteration....does a decent job and for more"fine tuning" I use the photo shop...just from looking at the different attemps at altering your pic(which really is a nice photo)I've noticed everyone's 'eye' for color is certainly different...but...that's to be expected.......photography (to me) is just like an oil painting or art work...subjective I guess...what one person see's as a "work of art"...certainly may not be appealing to another ...everyone here made your photo into something we each visualized as a "perfect" or at least what that person invisioned as a good pic..I personally like photos that are bursting with natures color......the one's that "grab you" when first viewing them(but not to the point of being overly saturated either)...some of my photos I've posted were taken on a grey, overcast day but through photo manipulation ,I made them look they they were taken in full sunlight at 12 noon....I'm still learning......I've alot to learn yet...but it's fun..I guess I've found my "niche" in photography....I saw a fisher this weekend...had my camera with me too but the fisher was too fast ...maybe sunday morning...jonny

[Steve Foss]

Yeah, Tom, good batteries, eh?

One of the things CS2 allows you to do is pretty cool. Say you're looking at the above image and parts are very dark and parts very light, so much light contrast your image sensor will either completely blow out the highlights or turn the shadows into solid black. This works best from a tripod, for obvious reasons, but you can take several exposures of the identical image, exposing for the black shadows to get detail in them, then changing each exposure a stop or two, working up the scale until the lightest part of the image is properly exposed. In the image with properly exposed shadows, the highlights will be totally blown out (no data captured.) On the images with the highlights exposed properly, the shadows will be nearly pure black (heavy with digital noise and grain.) Taken separately, there's only a limited degree of manipulation you can do to "save" each of these photos, even when you expose properly for mid-range and then have highlights nearly blown out and shadows very dark.

Using CS2, you can take all those files, which are of identical images but different exposures and in effect lay them over each other. CS2 then takes the properly exposed portions of each image and combines them for a single image with proper exposure to shadow and highlight and everything in between. I haven't shelled out the bucks to upgrade from CS to 2, but that feature (which I've read about but of course haven't used) is one reason I'll be upgrading.

Anyone who wants to get better at the craft should subscribe to Outdoor Photography magazine, which has lots of good articles about film and digital photography and tips on how to use photo manipulation programs. They're online, as well.

[polarsusd81]

Steve, that is a very cool thought. I did not know about that process in CS2, I will have to look into that and try it out. I had a friend who works for a printing company print out the photo on 13 x 19 paper with a 1/2" border all the way around. He printed out three versions, original, one I enhanced, and one he enhanced, and all three look awesome on paper. I am going to send one framed to my grandfather, I am sure he will enjoy it. The subscription to Outdoor Photographer is going to be ordered as soon as I get in the new apartment, but up to now I have bought it off the shelf.

[Steve Foss]

Good deal, Tom. Nothing quite as sweet as seeing a nice enlargement of one of your own good images, is there?

The Rebel will allow you to make bigger prints than that even, especially if you shoot RAW. I had a commission last year taking landscape images of an abandoned farmstead and used a 10D, which has roughly the same sensor as the Rebel (though not the updated Rebel XT). Shooting at 100 iso in the RAW format, I took some of those images and had them printed 28 inches wide, using CS's "interpolation" feature, which is a fancy way of saying "adding pixels." The results were sharp as a tack. I used to use a Rebel for the paper I shoot for, and got similar results on enlargements that I tried just to see if the Rebel's sensor was up to the task. It was.

And, as discussed before, it's not just megapixel count, but the quality of the sensor. At 6.3 megapixels, the Rebel's got enough muscle to make nice sized enlargements, and one of the nice things about Canon is that they've been leading the pack regarding how much of each DSLR image goes strictly to the image. All digital images use some memory for "administration data" type functions, some brands more than others. Unless things have changed in the last year or so, Canon has been the leader in keeping that administrative data very low.