Honkers Guided by Light

In early January on a cold and windy day before I hit the gravel roads to scout for geese, I stopped to check out their roost on the Lake. To my surprise, some of the birds were coming back to get a drink of water and with the strong wind, were dropping right in around the lighthouse. I figured this would be a good photo opportunity so I got the camera out of the back of the truck.

The Nikon D90 was fitted with the Nikon 70-300mm lense and I checked to see that I was in AV mode, RAW and that the ISO was as low as possible. It is always a great idea to check your camera settings before shooting on each outing because the mode dial can get changed along with the fact that a photographer is consistently changing settings. With the 70-300mm, I was able to zoom in on the lighthouse but yet timed my images to get the geese flying through the frame. I shot from two different locations at the marina that allowed me to get images with and without the US Flag.

On the computer, I processed the RAW files in ViewNX and Adobe Camera RAW adjusting the white balance, sharpness, highlights and shadows along with the custom picture controls. Having learned from my previous posting, I kept the picture controls alittle less dramatic but yet adjusted other settings in PSE8.

Cropping of the images was done in PSE8 along with adjusting Hue/Saturation which is very helpful in adjusting the whites and reds in these images to make certain parts pop. To set different moods of the images, I used the VirtualStudio plug in to create different black and white images but yet kept the United States flag alone to make it stand out in the images.

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