Get n' Dizzy - Spring Snows 2015

The spring conservation order for snow geese is one of my favorite times of the year as it brings amazing sights and sounds. There is nothing quite like having a large flock of snow geese landing in your decoys with them stacked up from 5 yards to 150 plus yards. Hunting them takes a lot of hard work and preparation, but when everything works out like it’s supposed to, it is well worth it. Below are the images from the behind the blind this spring.

 

I switched between using the 12-24mm, 24-120mm and my newest lense, a 35mm f1.8 prime, on the D90 this spring. To capture different angles of the snow geese coming in, I changed the placement of the camera behind the hunters. I hooked up one of my remote controls and used that to click the shutter. I had the camera in aperture priority mode with f7.1 to f11 as the aperture with the ISO ranging from 200-800.  To get the most out of the pictures, I shot in RAW. I also switched the lense to manual focus so I didn’t have to worry about bad focusing issues.

 

Once in View NX, I adjusted the images based on their exposure, white balance, picture control settings and shadow/highlights.  I did use a few new picture controls I downloaded that offered a crazy look to some of the images. The majority of them were either the sport or nature-landscape picture control and either direct sunlight or shade white balance.  HDR images were also made out of some of the images so created different exposed images in View NX to create those in Easy HDR. Adobe Camera RAW was used too to work on the raw files if I didn’t like what View NX was doing with its settings.

 

To finish up the images, I used PS Elements to clone out unwanted objects in the frame. After using the cloning tool, curved layer masks were used to fine tune the look of the image. The final step was to sharpen them using the high pass filter.

 

It was a great spring season and the snow geese didn’t disappoint as I was able to capture some very neat images that I’ll enjoy viewing for a very long time.  With spring having arrived, it’s time to turn my efforts towards golf course and landscape photography along with learning the excitement of astrophotography.  

 

#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.

 #44.

 #45.

 #46.

 #47.

 #48.

 #49.

 #50.

 #51.

 #52.

 #53.

 #54.

 #55.

 #56.

 #57.

 #58.

 #59.

Autumn Scenes

 

2014-15 Fall Waterfowl Season

The 2014-15 fall waterfowl season was sum’d up in two words: Abnormal Conditions. The season started off with lots of rain creating flooded corn to hunt followed by an early freeze only to have water back open after Christmas.

During the season, I had my D90 in the blind with me and for a few weeks while it was getting fixed, the D7100. Both cameras were fitted with the 12-24mm or 24-120mm lenses. RAW was used at all times along with aperture priority. ISO’s were kept at the lowest value possible.  The majority of the time the camera was in the blind with me since I was having alittle trouble with the Vello remote and a bad cable.

Once onto the computer, I used View NX to adjust the images using exposure compensation, white balance, picture control and highlight/shadow sliders if needed. Typical white balance setting were either daylight or cloudy. Typical picture control settings were either landscape or my custom nature/landscape.  I did create a number of HDR images so using View NX, I copied the RAW files and adjusted the exposure compensation to different – and + settings to get the combination I desired. 16 Bit Tiff files were then made out of them and transferred into Easy HDR to create the HDR images.

All files were processed in PSE11 for their final step. I used the clone brush tool to get rid of unwanted objects along with straightening/cropping the image if needed. A level’s layer was used also at certain times. To sharpen the images, I used an unsharp mask layer and adjusted the opacity to overlay and reduced it down to around 10%.

It was another great year in the blind with family and friends even amongst the abnormal conditions. I’m already looking forward to the spring conversation season on snow geese and hope to capture some unique images.

#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.