Butch Mazzuca, BPSA
October 2026 - Bat Outta Hell
Original
Original 2
About the Image(s)
Canon R5 -Canon 100-500 at 500mm -ISO 100 -f/11-30-second Tv
I view Photoshop’s Generative Fill, i.e., artificial intelligence as I would a gardening tool like a rake or a hoe. I’m looking for a tool, not a gardener.
As you can see, the subject in the RAW file is clipped, but it was sharp and with a good histogram. Knowing AI would make the image ineligible for club competition, I decided to take it in a different direction in post, and go for an eerie, edgy, artsy, otherworldly look.
A friend had arranged to use a desert property with a man-made pond to photograph bats and asked if I wanted to join him. Having photographed bats only once before, I jumped at the chance.
Bats are nocturnal and, when drinking, tend to fly in consistent patterns, so we had a good idea of where they would be feeding and drinking. Twenty minutes before sunset, we set up four flashes at 1/64 power-approximately 1/16,000 second-linked to a laser trigger that fired whenever a bat flew through its beam. We placed our tripods 25 feet from the anticipated flight path and prefocused the cameras, flashes, and laser on the area where we expected the bats to fly and left the area lest we scare or spook the bats :-)
The angle of view for a Canon R5 focused at 25 feet with a 500mm lens is roughly four degrees, and one is never quite sure precisely where the subject will appear within that narrow field. Over four hours I captured about a dozen bats in flight.
When I opened the images in LrC, I could a problem: the tip of the subject’s right wing was clipped. (See original.) But I remembered Ansel Adams’ famous quote - You don’t take a photograph, you make it -and decided to work the image in post.
I used the LrC exposure slider to remove all traces of the environment keeping only the bat and its reflection against a jet-black background. In Photoshop, I added canvas on all four sides, used Generative Fill to restore the missing portion of the bat’s right wing, and flipped the image horizontally, did some touch up in LrC and re-cropped.
7 comments posted
I really appreciate how difficult this shot must have been to capture. I imagine there were plenty of mosquitoes around for the bats to eat, too! I have to say, I really like the scarier-looking bat as well.
Since you've already chosen your image, I decided to work with that one. I thought it might look interesting if the harsh lighting were reduced and the bats were made symmetrical rather than creating a true reflection. This is what I came up with.
It's really just a different perspective and isn't meant to convey anything specific. Your images are terrific, and this would be a great subject to work with as a composite. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to play with it! Posted: 10/06/2026 16:54:30
