A Little Trick I Use to Shoot the Grey Heron in the Eye

Whenever Possible Use a Tripod

 

 

Why does an old geezer like me carry a tripod along with the heavy camera and lenses ?

It helps steady everything when, I'm shooting in rapid fire and, I do that a lot.

The tripod, also holds my position when, I make manual adjustments.

Here's a screenshot taken while processing a RAW file of the image above.

There aren't any cross-hairs present inside the camera viewfinder.

The image is enlarged and the cross-hairs appear when I decide to do some cropping.

They show the exact point, I was focusing on, when the shutter was opened.

The Trick: Use a tripod and, focus on the bird's eye.

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Most of the time my cameras are set to spot focus on the eyes of wildlife.

After shooting all morning it was time to head to town for lunch.

When this scene caught my eye, I had to stop and take one more photo.

The metering mode was switched to pattern, in order to have sharp focus on the entire area.

Camera: Pentax K3

Lens: Pentax DAF4--300mm

Exposure:  f/11  1/100   ISO 100  

Date and Time:  MAY 21, 2015 at 11:16AM

Photography Tip: With Wildlife Always Aim for the Eye

This is a screenshot of a RAW photo taken Jun 6, 2012.

Normally, I wouldn't enlarge a photo file 200% but, this is to show you my focus point.

The cross-hairs are something I see in my editing program, not, in the camera viewfinder.

In wildlife photography, the eye is the most important part of the subject to capture.

Aim for, spot-meter and focus on the eye and you may have an award winning photo.

Check out my Photography Tips  

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Related Post: European Kingfisher

 

Photography Tip: Experiment with Aperture Settings

This won't be a lengthy Photography Tip explaining the whole field of aperture control, just two quick photos and the camera specs used to shoot them.  Taking your camera out of the fully Auto Mode and setting it to "A" (Aperture Priority) is all you need to do for this experiment.

The above photo was taken at an aperture setting of f/11.  The camera was mounted on a tripod and I focused on the grain.

The second photo was taken at an aperture setting of f/5.6 without changing the focus or readjusting the position of the tripod.

Taking control of aperture settings allows you to sharpen, or blur the background in your photo.

Try experimenting with some different aperture settings than what your camera likes to use.

Before long, you'll be wondering why they put that crazy Auto Mode thing on there !

VISIT MY WEBSITE FOE THE PHOTO OF THE DAY

November Editor's Picks with RyukyuMike's Photo Contest Tips

A Sacred Grove in Okinawa, Japan

Among the Mangroves in Okinawa

Among the Weeds

Orange-tip Butterfly

Plus, one photo from October's Contest, an Editor's Pick, which moved on to become a Finalist.

Entering Photo Contests is a great way to have your photography recognized and I would encourage any aspiring photographer to enter as many as possible.

The competition is stiff and every contest you enter has it's own set of rules.

Following the rules, every little detail of them, is the first step.  So, read them carefully.

Tens of thousands of contest entries are submitted every month.

The simplest way for judges to lighten their workload is eliminate anyone who didn't follow the rules.

HERE ARE MY FIVE TIPS FOR PHOTO CONTEST ENTRIES:

1.  Make sure the photo is sharp.  That means the subject is clear and the focus is not on something else in the picture's frame.  Judges have a good eyes for this.  You can't fool them.

2.  Exposure has to be perfect.  Underexposed and overexposed photos are eliminated, always.

3.  Composition.  Learn the basic rules of composition and apply them.  The Rule of Thirds, Leading Lines, Framing, Curves, Symmetry, Patterns and Background are just a few of the terms used in basic photographic composition.  If you don't understand them, you are just experimenting.  That's fine, and I encourage experimentation.  But, it rarely gets you anywhere in a photo contest.

After using 1-3 above, in taking a photo, the next two tips come in handy when you submit a contest entry.

4.  Title:  Give your photo a title that gets the judges attention.  I get away with just putting a critter's name on a wildlife photo, sometimes, just because it's something a judge has never seen before.  

But, if I shot a picture of a cat, I wouldn't title it "Cat".  Let someone else do that.

5.  Caption:  Try to come up with something interesting to say in your description of the photo.

Many contests base their scores on the five tips given above.  Some grade the photos entered by awarding a possible 20% of the total score for each of those five steps.

That means, if you took a perfect picture, as far as focus, exposure and composition go, you could lose out to the folks who had the best titles and captions.  Forty percent of your score may not even depend on what came out of your camera.  Another photographer can beat me with their choice of words.  

That means I have to use my brain, too.  OUCH !


Time permitting, I will add more about entering photo contests to my PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS.

Wildlife Photography: Tip #4

Aim for the eye:


Most of the time, the wildlife shots I take, are with the camera handheld. This is not the ideal way to shoot if you’re setting out to win a photography contest. A sturdy tripod and cable release would be the way to do that. But, I prefer to travel light and move fast so, the best thing I can do is work with the higher shutter speeds. At least 1/100 for every 100mm of length on the lens is what’s required to do handheld shooting. I like to use spot metering and move my focus point, aim and when I see the sun light up the bird's eye, shoot.

A Black Pacific Reef Egret taken 28APR2009 7:56AM f/8 1/800 ISO 200 Pentax K10D Sigma 50-500@500mm.