osprey c&c welcome

[jamn4ex]

TV 1/4000 AV 8.0 ISO 800

[epmi314]

Pics are good. Really close to being great. I would say a little less shutter speed to get the ISO down, maintain the exposure and reduce what noise there is in the shot(s) especially #1. #2 is pretty solid. That's just my humble and unexpert 2 cents.

[jamn4ex]

Thanks Scott I will try that , I am going back to that river next week hopefully the birds will be plentiful.

[JohnC]

Excellent shots. I've just been to a place called Manton Bay, Rutland Water here to see the Ospreys (I have the nest webcam images on my screen permanently) but the hide is at least 400 metres away. I have a Canon 100-400 lens(plus the 1.4 X extender) and was disappointed with the results - blurry, then the guy a few places along who had the Canon 600mm showed me his shots and they were the same - heat haze caused the shimmering. When the heat wen later in the day a strong breeze blew up and that caused the lens to vibrate . In a couple of weeks or less the 3 chicks will leave the nest and stay around the lake for a couple of weeks or more then fly to Senegal, NW Africa so I'll return to the lake and hope they fly nearer the lake edges, I'm told they will and that they will sit in a tree(without leaves) just 50 metres away-the adult Ospreys never use that tree. Amazingly,I was told that at the end of August the female and chicks will fly to Senegal and the male will stay a day or two and tidy the nest then he'll go and he will return on March 23 at about 3.00pm (he was late this year arriving at 4.00pm lol) to get the nest ready for the return of the female. It's the male that does all the fishing and the parents continue to feed the chicks until they leave for Senegal- I thought they'd have taught them how to fish in the lake at Rutland but they don't..Magnificent birds and you've captured them very well.

Here's the webcam in case you missed it in an earlier post. http://www.ospreys.org.uk/webcam/

[FrankMi]

Nice shots James, but I would drop the signature as the eye goes straight to the text and after glancing at the image, goes back to the text. Very distracting on otherwise beautiful images.

[jamn4ex]

Thanks for the input. I suppose I could put a white border and signature on that, if I knew how.Meanwhile I knocked the iso down last trip will post couple more with less noise .thanks again

[FrankMi]

Thanks for the input. I suppose I could put a white border and signature on that, if I knew how.Meanwhile I knocked the iso down last trip will post couple more with less noise .thanks again

Hi James, although there are many ways to create a border or frame for the picture, in Photoshop and I suspect Elements as well I use three actions, one for small images (up to 1500px), one for medium images (from 1500-3000px), and one for large images (over 3000px). All three execute the same steps but with different size borders for the frame. The result is White, Black, and selected color frame surrounding a beveled image. Against a white background you will only see the Black and colored border. The basic process is to:
1. Based on the image size, create a canvas that is larger (small=100px, medium=160px, large=300px) than the image.
2. Select the innermost frame color, usually by eyedropper selection, of a color in the image. Use this color for the canvas.
3. Create a Bevel for the image.
4. Merge the canvas and image.
5. Use two inside strokes. The first is Black for the center frame color and based on the image size (small=45px, medium=70px, large=130px). The second is White for the outer frame color and based on the image size (small=30,medium=45px, large=90px).

The detail steps are:
1. Set the Background to Layer so it can be updated (Layer 0).
2. Add a New Layer (Layer 1).
3. Increase the Canvas size of the New Layer (Layer 1) to twice the desired Frame width using Relative and the pixel size mentioned above for the image size in question.
4. Set the Foreground Color to a mid-gray in case the user doesn’t want to select a color for the canvas (innermost border color).
5. Stop and let the user change the Foreground Color if they wish.
6. Fill the Border Layer with the Foreground Color.
7. Select the Image Layer (Layer 0) and set the Layer Style to Bevel and Emboss.
8. Merge the Visible Layers.
9. Use Edit/Stroke to apply Black for the center border color at a width determined above based on image size.
10. Use Edit/Stroke to apply White for the outer border color at a width determined above based on image size.
11. Clean-up by using Flatten Image and resetting the foreground/background colors to default.

Hope this helps!

[Dave Humphries]

Hi James,

They are very good shots and I agree about the text distracting, but I must ask; why, oh why the different WB? (on the last two especially)

If nothing else, since the lighting conditions were so similar in the last two, didn't you use the kelvin WB figures on #2 to set the WB on #3, so they are the same? Or sample both from a neutral bit of chest feathers.

As Scott says, almost great final images (from great captures)

Hope that doesn't sound too harsh,

[jimpayne]

nice photos, but in my opinion very little origanal creativity! These are the classic ( eagle flying) photos, just like the same ( portaite of a flower) photo or even worse the ( Fruit in a basket) photo! In my opinion , there are photos that look nice and those that are great.
The GREAT, is a mix of alot of things, and one of those is origanality!

[jamn4ex]

LOL well Jim next time I see an osprey carrying a fruit basket past a single flower I will really bore you to death with the most unoriginal photo you ever saw... oh and thanks for your candid critique

[jamn4ex]

Dave I dont have a clue why my white balance missed so badly.... thats definitely something I will pay more attention to in the future. My only exscuse is that I made a classic amateur mistake. (and we can expect many more) I probably did my post processing on each one at different times.thanks your critiques

[jamn4ex]

Frank thank you for the instructions.(I hope they work with elements 9) I cant wait to try it, as a matter of fact I"m gonna right now