Wednesday, January 23, 2013

It's a Bit Parched Out - 2012 Waterfowl Season

After a summer of record heat and dry conditions, the 2012 waterfowl season arrived with area marshes being almost dry which made for an interesting season. With a couple late rains and some hard work scouting, the season turned out to be a success. The D90 was in the blind with me for almost every hunt and captured the scenes of the waterfowl hunter.

My camera was either in the blind with me or set up behind me on a tripod so the 18 – 105mm and 12-24mm lenses got the work for this season. The camera was always in RAW format and aperture priority mode with adjustments to exposure compensation and flash output if needed. The Hahnel wireless remote control allowed me to sit in my blind and capture the birds coming into the decoys while still being able to handle my shotgun.

Throughout the season, I uploaded the files off my camera onto my computer and into ViewNX to post process them. If needed, I adjusted the main settings that I do on all my RAW files: exposure compensation, white balance, picture control & highlight/shadow slider. The white balance was set to either shade, direct sunlight or cloudy while the picture control was set to custom settings of sport, nature-landscape and monochr. The sliders for highlight and shadows were changed to save highlights or lighten the images.

To finalize the images, I used my new software, Photoshop Elements 11 to do the final adjustments on these images. I used levels along with a layer masks, clone brush tool and straighten/crop to put the final touches on the waterfowl images. I also created multiply exposed files in ViewNX and then merged them together in EasyHDR to create HDR images.

It is hard to believe another season is in the books but once again, it was a great time spent with family and friends along with being behind the camera. I look forward to getting some rest the next month and getting ready for snow goose season.
 
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