Tag: missouri

Technically Proficient Photographers – Lend Me your Ear!

birds, wildlife

I have recently become aware of a concerning issue with presenting my photographs in the digital medium and I am begging for someone to help me.  I have noticed that there are dramatic differences in color temperatures and overall contrasts depending on what web browser or photo viewing software is used to view my images.  Take this one for instance.  I primarily use Firefox for my web browser and using it the image looks exactly as I finished it in Photoshop, nice and warm with contrasts that make it pop a bit (trust me, that day was anything but warm with temps in the high teens).  If you have the means, view this image in Firefox and Internet Explorer.  Can you see the differences?  In IE, the temps are much cooler and the image is overall muddy with low contrasts.  I have also seen differences in software used to view JPEGS.  In “Windows Photo Viewer” the image is exactly as I processed, but in “Quick Time” it is just as I described in IE.  Most disturbingly, every mobile device (ipod, smartphone, etc…) in which I have viewed my images has also displayed them in this cooler, mushy form.

I am very much a novice in terms of working with file formats, image modes, color profiles and everything related.  I am hoping someone out there can help me with this as you can see this looks to be a major problem.  If you can give me some incite, I will be eternally grateful.  I will even offer up your choice of one of my daughters.  Well, I don’t have any real daughters, but we do have four cats, and they are quite cute I assure you.  😉

Here is some info about my settings and workflow in case it might help: Convert from RAW in LR3 (ProPhoto RGB, 16-bit), move to PS CS6, work in TIFF (RGB, 16-bit), save as JPEG.  I am reasonably comfortable that I am working on a well-calibrated, acceptable quality monitor on a Windows platform.

Thanks for anything you can provide!

IMG_9135

“Warm Flight”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF500mm f/4.5L USM lens, ISO 400,  f/5.6, 1/1600 sec

Cold Origin of Life?

landscape

Fire and Ice

by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Will the world ultimately end in fire or ice, desire or hate?  I don’t know, but a multitude of fascinating theories exist for the origin of life on earth.  I’ve recently read an interesting theory that suggests ice-cold conditions were more conducive for the origin of the first complicated molecules.  Although cold temperatures are a detriment to most life on earth, several potential problems are alleviated by this as well.  An interesting read if you like.  Pictured below is the main boil of water that is released from Big Spring located in the Missouri Ozarks

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“Cold Origins″
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, EF17-40mm f/4L USM @ 19mm, ISO 100,  f/14, 1/6 sec

Magnolia Warbler, Autumn 2012

birds, wildlife

Magnolia Warblers can be a blast to watch as they migrate through the St. Louis region.  Searching almost nonstop for tasty prey hidden on the undersides of leaves on shrubs and short trees, they will sometimes hover as well as take short looping flights following insects that have been flushed.

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“Magnolia Warbler, Autumn 2012”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera,  EF400mm f/5.6L USM lens, ISO 640,  f/5.6, 1/1000 sec

The Oven Bird

birds, wildlife

The Oven Bird

THERE is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

-Robert Frost-

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“Ovenbird, Autumn 2012”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera,  EF400mm f/5.6L USM lens, ISO 640,  f/5.6, 1/200 sec

The Sedge Wren

birds, wildlife

“…wildlife once fed us and shaped our culture.  It still yields us pleasure for leisure hours, but we try to reap that pleasure by modern machinery and thus destroy part of its value.  Reaping it by modern mentality would yield not only pleasure, but wisdom as well.”

-Aldo Leopold-

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“Sedge Wren, Autumn 2012”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera,  EF400mm f/5.6L USM lens, ISO 800,  f/5.6, 1/160 sec

A Mouthfull

birds, wildlife

“A sense of history should be the most precious gift of science and of the arts, but I suspect that the grebe, who has neither, knows more history than we do.  His dim primordial brain knows nothing of who won the Battle of Hastings, but it seems to sense who won the battle of time.  If the race of men were as old as the race of grebes, we might better grasp the import of his call.  Think what traditions, prides, disdains, and wisdoms even a few self-conscious generations bring to us!  What pride of continuity, then, impels this bird, who was a grebe eons before there was a man.”

-Aldo Leopold-

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“Peid-billed Grebe with Fish”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF500mm f/4.5L USM lens, ISO 640,  f/5.6, 1/800 sec

Swoop of a Hawk

birds, wildlife

“The outstanding characteristic of perception is that it entails no consumption and no dilution of any resources.  The swoop of a hawk, for example, is perceived by one as the drama of evolution.  To another it is only a threat to the full frying-pan.  The drama may thrill a hundred successive witnesses; the threat only one – for he responds with a shotgun.”

-Aldo Leopold-

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“Red-tailed Hawk”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF500mm f/4.5L USM lens, ISO 640,  f/8, 1/1000 sec

Tennessee

birds, wildlife

“That thing called ‘nature study’, despite the shiver it brings to the spine of the elect, constitutes the first embryonic groping of the mass-mind toward perception.”

-Aldo Leopold-

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“Tennessee Warbler – Autumn Migration 2012”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera,  EF400mm f/5.6L USM lens, ISO 500,  f/5.6, 1/640 sec

Currently I Dream…

landscape

“The trophy-recreationist has peculiarities that contribute in subtle ways to his own undoing.  To enjoy he must possess, invade, appropriate.  Hence the wilderness that he cannot personally see has no value to him.  Hence the universal assumption that an unused hinterland is rendering no purpose to society.  To those devoid of imagination, a blank space on a map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.  (Is my share in Alaska worthless to me because I will never go there?  Do I need a road to show me the arctic prairies, the goose pastures of the Yuckon, the Kodiak bear, the sheep meadows behind McKinley?)”

-Aldo Leopold-

IMG_1645

“Currently I Dream…″
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM @ 165mm, ISO 100,  f/13, 1.3 sec