Equipment
Canon EOS 7D w/ Canon 100-400mm L
Canon EOS 50D w/Canon 28-135mm
Photography has long been an interest, but the cost of film and processing was a significant deterrent. The digital age has changed that. In 2009, I took the leap to good DSLR equipment.
Photography is now integral to my bird watching, and has transformed my bird watching. I take time to wait ... and watch ... and hopefully capture images of birds (and other subjects) that are interesting, informative, crisp, and perhaps even artistic.
A professional photographer recently told me that 90% of a good photograph came from the time spent in the darkroom. Now of course, that time is spent on the computer. I have no interest is learning the complexities of photo editing & altering programs (such as Photoshop). But I regularly make minor adjustments: cropping to improve composition, or make a "small" subject "larger" and some adjustments in exposure, contrast, fill light, white balance, color, or sharpness.
I shoot everything in jpeg because it is faster and files are smaller than camera raw. When processing photos, I dump the bad shots, and make a few adjustments to the keepers.
To reduce upload time to blogger, I reduce the size to 800 pixel width.
Photos on this blog: Since December, 2011, photo are taken with the Canon EOS 7D. Prior to that, I used a Canon EOS 50D. To provide illustrations for my monthly newspaper column, I sometimes go into my archives. (Most of these were taken with a Sony DSC-H5 or Sony DSC-HX1; distant subjects were digiscoped with Leica Televid 70.) On rare occasions, I use a photograph or illustration which to the best of my knowledge is in the public domain.
Photo Editing:
Cropping, adjustments, and resizing is done with ACDSee Photo Pro 3. Some adjustments are made with Photoshop Elements 10.0
