Ducks Unlimited Waterfowl 360 Results - 5th out of 582

Thank you to everyone that viewed and voted for my F5 Tornado photograph that was selected as a top 5 finalist for the Ducks Unlimited Waterfowl 360 Photo Contest earlier this month.

The results have been released and I ended up 5th out of the five finalist but I learned that there was 582 total photo submissions so I will take 5th out of 582.

Time to keep on shooting and if I'm lucky one day, I'll win a contest for Ducks Unlimited.

Trusted Hunting Equipment underneath the Sb-700

After having some success with the Nikon Speedlight SB-700 shooting Absolut vodka bottles in the dark, I figured I might as well get out some hunting equipment and do the same. I gathered up the product brands that I use every day while out in the marsh: Beretta, , Winchester, Drake, Kent, Greenhead Gear and Lynch Mob along with a collection of goose bands.

Once again I placed the D90 on the Slik 500DX tripod and used the Nikon 18-105mm and Sigma 50-150mm lense. I used the 36mm Zeiko extension tube on the Sigma lense which allowed me to get within  inches of the goose bands to really get up close to them. Manual focus was used along with VR being turned off on both lenses. Settings on the camera were RAW, aperture priority mode and ISO of either 200 or 400. A wide aperture of f2.8 to f6.3 were used on the goose band close ups while the other images were at f16.

The SB-700 lit up the products and bands in manual mode off camera by allowing me to adjust the power output of the flash. A range of 1/1 to 1/128 allowed to me to dial in the lighting that I needed. To change the “warmth” of the flashes light discharge, the incandescent filter was attached to the flash.

I transferred the files into ViewNX to process the images by changing the picture controls. Landscape-Nature, Mono Snow Goose and MonChr_G+con picture controls were used to give the images the look that I wanted. The shadow adjustment slider was used a bit to lighten up the background on some of these images.

I used PSE8 to put the final touches on the images by using the cloning brush tool and cropping tool to remove minor scratches from the equipment. The Virtual Studio plug-in for PS was used too with the WWII black/white filter to give another look to a few key images.

Using the flash I was able to highlight the products that I trust while hunting and look forward to the springtime to use the flash during snow goose season. 

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2012 Waterfowl Hunting Calendar

If you have ever been in a marsh or laying out in a cornfield, duck and goose hunters get to experience sights that are unreal and often have you saying “did that just happen.” Lucky for you, I have captured this experience as my camera is always with me while out hunting. From having a Canada goose almost land on top of my layout blind to having thousands of snow geese above the decoys, this “Waterfowl Hunting - A Way of Life” 2012 calendar showcases these amazing sights.

Below are the images used on this Waterfowl Hunting Calendar. National holidays and other holidays are also printed on the calendar.

This center fold 11” x 8.5” calendar is professionally printed and will make a great gift for any hunter that enjoys the sights of the great outdoors.

Please go under Contact Me to send me an email to place an order.

More information about my calendar's underneath the calendar products page as well.

Front Cover

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Absolut Speedlight

It didn’t take me long to start practicing with the Nikon Speedlight SB-700 that I got after the New Year and after shooting some images, I should of purchased one much sooner! With cold weather outside, the basement turned into a “product” studio for Absolut vodka using bar stools and coffee tables.

I used a wide range of equipment to get these close up images of the bottles and it all started with the D90 on the Slik 500DK tripod in RAW mode and using f6.3 to f16 in aperture priority mode. ISO was either set at 200 or 400 to keep noise low. The lenses used were Nikon 18-105mm, Nikon 70-300mm and the Sigma 50-150mm. I used the Zeikos extension tubes on these lenses to fill the frame with the bottle or Absolut logo itself.  All autofocus systems were turned off along with VR on the lenses.

The excitement of this “product” shoot on Absolut bottles was these were taken with no lights on in the basement. The Nikon SB-700 lit up the bottles by using it as a remote flash unit. This allowed me to manually adjust the flash output from 1/1 all the way down to 1/128 if desired along with changing the position of the flash to light up the bottles.  To change the “warmth” of the flashes light discharge, the incandescent and diffusion filters were used. Food coloring in the bottles filled with water helped create different colored bottles and a very neat illusion.

ViewNX was used to process the RAW files by changing the picture control to the custom curves of Landscape-Nature and Mono Snow Goose that I created a while back and use often. Since the flash did a great job of lighting up the subject, exposure compensation and shadow/highlight sliders were seldom used.

A little work was done in PSE8 by straighten the images and cropping them after I finalized them in ViewNX. A few scratches and other lines on the Absolut bottles were cloned out using the cloning brush tool.

After taking these images, I can see that the SB-700 will get a workout on my camera or off the camera as I continue to learn how and when to use it to help with lighting conditions.

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