After seeing this post I just had to go look at your site! Hats off to yea! Those have to be some of the best bird pictures I have seen hands down! Awesome shots again hate to repeat myself but it is what is Your site made my bookmarks and I will be coming back in the future to see what's new.
Mike K
Mike,
Thank you so much for the encouraging comment. The website is just about finished. It just went thru a major design upgrade. I spent over a month working out new algorithm for the main database and the new "Bird Art" section, all while maintaining fast navigation and high quality display of the images. I've already been contacted by several photographers to design their websites/gallery for them.
Your feedback is most appreciated.
Andy
Jun 02, 2009 at 11:26 PM
Lars Johnsson Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: Off
Nathan Hobbs wrote:
out of these 15 images..how many did you have to shoot to get them!
im really curious, i tried my luck at a swarm of birds over a pond in yellowstone yesterday and gave up lol! no thanks ill stick to big game animals and birds perched on trees for the time being, its stinking hard!
Nathan,
To be honest, I went through the whole 8GB card (that's about 1000 shots). After that is the hard job of deleting the bad ones, eliminating more than half. Next step is to compare the remaining stuff for similar poses/compositions and choose the best ones, that should take it down to about 100 or so. Then this is where I'll take a close look to see which ones are unique (haven't seen before - how about originality? ), and which ones are striking (for these to make the cut, they HAVE to meet my technical standards, and then I'll judge them on expressiveness - for creativity). That would narrow it down to about 30-40 images, these are my keepers and they get uploaded onto my gallery / website. Out of which, I'd select around a dozen that suit a certain theme to post on FM, not bad for a day's work.
I want to add, however, when shooting intense action like this for hours at a time, all the time hand holding and having to raise the camera/lens at ready position can take its toll on the body. My arms and shoulders felt bruised for days onward.
AtlPikMan3 wrote:
Hands down the best ive seen. I have a D300 and both lenses you mentioned..I Am Not Worthy!
Believe me, it wasn't easy. I actually got frustrated at times. There was just too much action. What I got was only a tenth of what I missed!
Thank you my man, and welcome to the forum.
Martin Good wrote:
Hi Andy, how are you
Too many to comment on individually but my overall impression is dynamic action, competition (between the birds), life and death drama and all in all a fantastic set.
I like the bg on the first one and it makes the bird stand out well and gives it a warm feeling in contrast to # 4 which appears grey and cool.
My favourite of the set is # 9 for the head on catch and the way the wings seem to be enfolding the fish but I find it just a bit dark.
I note your mimimal approach to pp and I do the same but I do think that a little can do a lot to enhance an image.
Martin...Show more →
Thank you for the detailed critique, Martin. All points are well taken. I'll consider your last comment for further review. Thanks again.
What I really like is the diversity of the shots you have here and the amount of great behaviour you have captured. 5, 8, 9, 10 and 14 are my favourites but they are all beautiful.
I showed these shots to my wife, she's not a photographer and doesn't get impressed just because a shot is technically difficult, but she was seriously impressed with these.
By the way, the images on your website home page photo show are a sensation.
Paul.
Paul,
Thank you for the very nice comment. It certainly brought a smile on my face even though I was having a not-so-good day. My wife IS a photographer and is not impressed with half the shots I took. j/k You might see her on the forum once in a while under the name Lady_Bug. Actually each of us contributes about equal amount of photos on the website, and she's a good supporter of my work. Thanks for looking. Would you care to sign our Guestbook?
Andy, Loved the shots esp the B&W that is just captivating. Would love to know your settings on some of these. I am new to animal photography and have been playing for the past few days with a pair of Osprey nest about 10 miles from my home. I would love to catch the fishing this summer while I am on the coast of Rhode Island.
On another note I am on a Mac book and visited your website, Love it except that it does not allow me to scroll the enlarged photos. I tried three different browsers to see if there was something that was browser specific with no luck. Love the concept but it does make for unhappy views on the laptop screen when you have great shots that are cut off. Just an FYI.
Shasoc wrote:
Wonderful job with these, Andy. You need a lot of skill to get pics like that and you definitely got it. I don't see Exif embedded, but you managed to freeze some great fast action poses, all with a very pleasing light and colors. As has already been said one of the best Tern series posted. 1, 3, 7 and 12 are my favorites.
Socrate
Thanks so much, Socrate. The EXIF info somehow gets discarded when I Save for Web. I shoot in Adobe color space. The "Save for Web" option automatically converts it into sRGB mode for me. Anyways, with such fast action, I needed SS of 1/3200 or higher. Some were even as high as 1/4000. Right now it's the middle of Tern season, once the weather clears up, I'll try to get a few more shots for another series.
Nello Milanese wrote:
They're all crazy good Andy and i'll be dam' happy if I nailed even 1 of these
1 thing that got my attention...why do you shoot jpeg? you can get so much more from Raw specially in terms of DR (useful here w b&w feathers).
Thank you, Nello.
I used to shoot RAW more than a year ago, until the extra step of converting to jpg and downloading took too much of my time. Then I realized, if my exposure control is perfect (or near perfect), I wouldn't need to shoot in RAW. If a shot is too far off for rescuing, I'd just scrap it. I thought the raw techniques would be more beneficial to the landscape folks (HDR stuff). My philosophy is "keep Nature Photography natural"
Your site made my bookmarks and I will be coming back in the future to see what's new.
I mean: really amazing 