Henry Doorly Zoo

Equipment Used: Nikon D750 and Nikon 70-300mm lense.

My latest photo shoot found me targeting animals that are bigger and a lot more dangerous than the waterfowl I’m used to photographing.  Luckily for me, they were behind glass as the family and I visited the Henry Dory Omaha Zoo a few weeks ago. I was there to get images of zoo animals for a nursery.

I didn’t really know what to expect as far as what lenses to bring so I carried in my 24-120mm f4 but very quickly replaced it with the other lense in my bag, the 70-300mm because I needed the reach. Having done some tests on the lense a week ago, I set it to f6.3 and had the D750 in aperture priority mode. The lighting was much darker than I expected so cranked the ISO to 3200-12800 with the majority of the time having it at 6400. I changed the metering mode to center weighted along with an exposure compensation of 0.7. I also changed the pv button to be able to switch the camera into DX crop mode.

Once in Capture NX-D, I adjusted the RAW files by changing the picture control to nature-landscape and tweaked the exposure compensation if needed. Adjustments to the contrast/saturation and shadow/highlight sliders were made as well.  

In PSE 11, final adjustments were made after cloning out unwanted objects in the image. Levels and layer masks were used to finalize the look of the color of the image. Cropping the image was done if needed as well.  The last was to use the unsharp mask to sharpen the image.

I also added two new backgrounds on the first two images because both animals were inside rooms with cables and cement walls that didn’t look very good. I used layer masks for this work.

With high ISO settings on the D750 and shooting through a plane of glass almost all the time during the walk through the whole zoo, I’m very happy with the results. The selected images should look great in the nursery. 

#1.

#2.

#3.

#4.

#5.

#6.

#7.

#8.

#9.

#10.

#11.

#12.

#13.

#14.

#15.

#16.

#17.

#18.

#19.

#20.

#21.

#22.

#23.

#24.

#25.

#25.

#26.

2016 Ducks Unlimited Member Photo Contest Winner

When the May/June issue of Ducks Unlimited magazine came out, the annual member photo contest winners were announced and a image that was taken by me, last spring, was chosen has the overall winner.

The winning photograph is one of my favorites that I've took during the spring conversation order for snow geese and I don't think it could of turned out any better than it did at the point of the hunt.

Read the press release below and see the amazing image:

http://www.ducks.org/news-media/photography/2016-du-member-photo-contest

2016 Spring Conversation Order - Long Time Coming

Equipment Used: Nikon D750, 24-120mm f4 lense, Viltrox remote control & Joby Gorillapod tripod.

The spring conversation order for snow geese came early this year and lasted longer than normal which was all good in my mind. The first hunt of the year was setting up underneath the stars in the sky while the last hunt of the year was under sunny blue skies. In between, I captured the scene of chasing snow geese that never gets old.

I set the D750 to aperture or bulb mode throughout the season and ranged the aperture depending on the depth of field I wanted. Bulb mode was used to capture the stars over the decoys. I used my headlamp to shine on the decoys during the exposure of the stars.  ISO ranged from 200-1600 as well. Exposure compensation was usually at +1/3 for the majority of these images. I used the Joby tripod and the Viltrox remote to capture incoming birds which allowed me to still shoot my shotgun.

Adjustments in Capture NX-D include white balance (set to shade, cloudy or direct sunlight), picture control (set to landscape), saturation, shadow and noise reduction. If needed, I would adjust the exposure compensation as well.

Once done in NX-D, I finalized the images in Elements 11 with first getting rid of unwanted objects using the clone brush. Next I would straighten and crop the image if needed. I then made local adjustments to certain areas of the images using curve and layer masks. The last step involved using an unsharp layer to sharpen the image.

I enjoyed a great season in the blind this spring and will have plenty of great images to get me through until the fall when duck season starts again. Until then, I hope to get out with the camera and capture scenes this spring and summer.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

#11

#12

#13

#14

#15

#16

#17

#18

#19

#20

#21

#22

#23

#24

#25

#26

#27

#28

#29

#30

#31

#32

#33

#34

#35

#36

#37

#38

#39

#40

#41

#42

#43 Processed in EasyHDR

#44

#45

#46

#47

#48

#49