Janice Rosner
About the Image(s)
I’m taking a risk here as this isn’t a traditional image but I’m interested to hear how people react to it. My goal for taking this image was to capture the intensity and chaos of a snow geese blast off. This was taken at a wildlife preserve and there were 1000’s of geese. I waited, sometimes for hours, to capture a blast off. I’m also interested in making blurs or more impressionistic images which convey a feeling. Initially, one might think it’s easy to take a blurred image as we all have had “blurry” images. However, to take an effective blur, you have to judge distance to subject, speed of subject, focal length, panning speed (or no panning) and adjust your Dof and shutter speed. There is an element of guessing in that for a bird blur such as this, you don’t always know how fast they will be going, I took several test images as I was waiting and checked my histogram to monitor my exposure (it was the am and the light was changing as the sun came up, so I had to frequently monitor my exposure while waiting for the blast off)
Here is the technical info. Canon 7D Mark ii, f29, 1/20 second, ISO 100, Canon 70-200 lens at 200mm. In ACR I increased the whites and added a touch of vibrance. I thought the original raw image was rather bland and the details of the birds were lost. So, in PS I added a fur and feathers adjustment at a low opacity to help define the structure of the birds. In the raw image, there were some open places where the birds were poorly defined and dark so I did add some bird detail there. I experimented with cropping the bottom but I preferred bringing out the detail of the birds. Finally, it was still rather flat and lacked contrast (a common issue with blurs) so I added a levels adjustment.
This round’s discussion is now closed!
9 comments posted
(Groups 4 & 15 & 58 & 59 & 72)
(Group 55)
When I looked at the photo I wasn't sure what I was looking at until I read your caption. While a blurred image is great, I'd like to be able to identify snow geese. I know if you keep working it, you'll have something great next blast off!   Posted: 05/17/2019 08:48:05
(Group 59)
  Posted: 05/19/2019 10:45:19
(Group 45)
next time, try faster then 1/30-1/50s and pan it, so least you got some birds in focus, then the rest of blur would enhance the mood, just my two cents.   Posted: 05/21/2019 20:44:03