52 Photographs - Week 13

Another stellar week of bird photographs. However, this week’s choice is a photograph I took of the moon floating on clouds. I’ve photographed the moon many times but always when the sky is dark. I even photographed a lunar eclipse in 2015. But this photograph was taken at around 7:30 am with a blue sky. Post processing and converting to black and white created this beautiful photograph.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

52 Photographs - Week 12

Well, this week’s choice is from the only photo shoot that I did during the week. I was in Wisconsin for the week for a doctor’s appointment on Friday. On Tuesday morning, I met my Grumpy Old Photographer friends for coffee and later that morning, my friend Bill and I headed out to Rock Cut State Park to see what we could find. And we found two pair of Greater Scaup ducks. I shot too many images and here’s only one of the best. A single male.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

52 Photographs - Week 11

And another week that had several possibilities. From more bird photographs to nature. And this week I selected a nature photograph.

While on my morning walk with Roxie last Saturday at Manchester Meadows Park I saw these rather small blue flowers covered in the morning dew.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

52 Photographs - Week 10

Well, look at this. It's not a bird photograph. I thought I'd try to get a good photograph of Roxie running and here it is.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

A Look Back with Today’s Software

 I had a Facebook comments “conversation” with a member of the Rock Hill, SC Photographers Facebook group yesterday.

Denise Wicker Cobb had posted a couple of photographs of a Cormorant. I commented: “Very nice. I have yet to get a photograph of a cormorant that I really like.”

Denise replied: “Chris Quillen they aren’t very pretty birds. I’m still trying to get a decent shot of an eagle.”

And I remembered that I had photographed eagles some years ago along the Rock River behind the Post Office in Beloit. So I got out my archive hard drive and began to search for them. It took me awhile but I did find them. The photos were shot using a Nikon D300 and a 12 year old 300mm f/4 Nikon lens. The D300 is a 12 megapixel camera.

At the time, I processed them with Lightroom. So I launched Lightroom and thought I’d see what I could do using Topaz Photo AI to sharpen the images and upscale one of them and wow, I was impressed with the results.

Here are three versions of one of the photographs. The first is the full frame, the second a cropped version, and the third cropped even more and sharpened and upscaled in Topaz Photo AI.

And here are several more with the full frame and the cropped and processed image.

And one that was just cropped and processed with Topaz Photo AI.

So for me here are the takeaways. Your thought may be different.

1. Unless you are going to make really big prints, megapixels do not matter. Most images today are viewed online; Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, SmugMug, a photographer’s web site, etc., so a high megapixel camera is really not necessary.
2. These eagle photographs were taken with a camera with no subject detection auto focus, no subject tracking auto focus, no in-body or lens image stabilization, and no frame rate higher the 6 frames a second. All those things make it easier to get the photographs you want but they are not necessary.
3. Topaz Photo AI can improve the quality of your images with careful processing. It’s worth it to take a look back at your catalog, whether Lightroom, Capture One, or some other software, and see which images could be improved by using Topaz Photo AI.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

  

52 Photographs - Week 9

Another week of bird photographs. I really need to start shooting different subjects. I feel like I'm in a rut. 

So here's this week's photograph. A Northern Mockingbird.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“