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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It is hard to believe another duck and goose season is over with but the season ended on January 12 which was as usually, seemed all too soon. The season started off alittle slower than normal but the good months of the season resulted in mallards and geese right in the decoys. When the conditions were right, I was putting down the shotgun and picking up the camera.
This season, I used the Nikon D90 and had either the Nikon 18-105mm or Sigma 50-150 lense fitted on it. For the majority of the images, I had the camera set to RAW but when needing a faster fps, I would switch to jpeg on those big flocks of birds. The camera was left on AV mode ranging from an f-stop from f5.6 to f10 to control the depth of field. I tried to keep the ISO as low as possible while still getting the shutter speed I needed to produce sharp images of incoming birds.
The images below were processed in ViewNX, Adobe Camera RAW and PSE8. Each program allowed me to process the images in different ways whether changing the exposure compensation, white balance, crop factor, curves, etc. Some of them turned out so well out of the camera, the adjustments were very minor and those are the most rewarding knowing that you nailed the settings out in the field.
I’m already looking forward to the spring snow goose season and hope to have the camera mounted on a tripod more firing it remotely behind the blinds.
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