A few Boreals on a snowy day

[Jim Almquist]

With heavy snow in the forecast it was a little slow around the feed station so the little guys gave me a few more seconds to get a shot off.

[MARINERMAGNUM]

Nice work Jim!

Some of these look very surreal. Did you use a flash?

[Steve Foss]

The second to the last one is a cool little puffball. Wish I had one like that!

[Jim Almquist]

Nice work Jim!

Some of these look very surreal. Did you use a flash?

Yes I do. It was some helpful advice from stfcatfish. I was set to -1 on my 580.

[Steve Foss]

Hmmm, these look nicely lit to me, with the flash acting as fill and not the primary light source. The only one a bit odd to me is the first one, and that's of course because of the harsh snow background. One can remove the telltale pinpoint of light from the eyes, or not, as one prefers.

MM, what do you find surreal about some of them?

Jim, one point to consider is that using flash this way for fill tends to cool down the color temp of the image compared with ambient light, and all but the first one of these look a bit too cool. When I do use flash this way, my color temps run from 4600 to 4800 on cloudy days. If you shot raw, you can increase color temp to around 5000 to 5200 in the raw preview screen. If you shot jpeg, you can go into levels after you open it and reduce the blue level a bit, which has the same effect. Give it a try and see if you like the warmer look better.

[Jim Almquist]

Thanks Steve I will have to give it a try.