I’m up in North Dakota for the first time shooting in Roosevelt Nat’l Park. This place is such a jewel! On my list since the 70s, I’m so glad I made it here and really wish I’d been here decades before! The rolling tapestry of hills, grasses, big skies, and critters at Roosevelt is truly stunning!
In just 24 hours I’ve used everything from 8-15Fish to 180-400 working the landscape and critters. And that’s with the first day being mostly rain! In fact, this is going to be a real short post as I have today’s images to still get through before sunrise lights up the day. mtc
Up until this last weekend, my B&W was done in post, not in the camera. That has all changed! Shootin the Z7 / Z24-70 at the Vintage Flying Museum, there was moody light leaking into the hangar highlighting this and that. The light and subject matter screamed B&W and I took it as the perfect opportunity to try the Monochrome, better thought of as B&W feature of the Z7. What you are seeing here are the B&W straight out of the Z7 (Nef – Capture NX-D – Tiff). There is no digital darkroom work on these files!
In the Monochrome Picture Control setting, I have taken Contrast to +5, Clarity to +5 and Filter to R (Red) and then I underexposed the whole scene -1 stops. Other than that, I didn’t do a thing other than play the light on the subject to bring out the drama and mood that is B&W. If you follow my blog, you know I have adopted many different methods to get to B&W over the decades. This is the first that for me, right out of the camera just performed beautifully. How do they print? Luscious! And the one thing I really appreciated is the Z7 displays all this B&W beauty on the LCD pretty darn accurately and richly as the final image on the computer. So now my favorite way of creating B&W will be in camera, in the Z7!
The light is making that move towards lusciousness as we approach the first day of fall. I love this time of year as I talked about on my Podcast yesterday. And that brought up some questions in folks, in the form of … help! My first recommendation is to watch my class on KelbyOne on Fall color. This class goes through everything from gear, tactics, finishing and to answer a number of your questions including places to go on the Eastside for fall color.
The most important thing to think about when shooting fall color is looking for color contrast. Now color contrast can be the yellow leaves against the blue sky, red against yellow and the one I think is essential, red+yellow against green. What’s important is making that fall color pop in the viewfinder not depending on post-production so when you do go into post, you need just a touch to finish it all off. In this process, the polarizer can be an incredibly useful tool. It can help “isolate” the fall color from teh color contrasting color making the fall color pop. Simply rotate the polarizer and watch the results. Other than that, think real wide or really long and you’ll come back with images with all the warmth of the reason!
I had a ton of fun this summer photographing hummingbirds. The thought crossed my mind to use the “slow motion” video mode in the D850 for the first time and record their flight in and out of the feeders. This was a helluva learning experience for me. For example, while it’s obvious, at the time it didn’t occur to me that shooting at 1920×1080 30p x4 sound wouldn’t be recorded. Duh! So while shooting stills with the D5 / 180-400, I had the D850 / 70-200f4 just running. I came back with 1TB of video from this experiment, yikes! I edited it down for a little fun. You can see some of my Hummer stills here at my AZ Bird Portfolio. Enjoy!
“Moose, help … I suck at B&W!” That email came in this past week and echoes what many others ask seeking help with the most romantic medium available to us. The help these folks are asking for is not so much in the post-processing, but “Seeing” B&W when they are looking at a scene and through the viewfinder. There are many ways you can TEACH YOURSELF to see in B&W, here’s the current method I’m suggesting to folks.
the full spectrum version of above B&W
Standing up on Steptoe looking over the spectacular Palouse, the pallet of colors is, gorgeous! Taking in visually all those colors and condensing them down to just shades of black and white mentally when we see ALL colors is the challenge. Having done this process for nearly fifty years and having an amazing teacher when I started out, it’s real easy for me. You can get yourself there by providing yourself a visual guide you can look at real-time.
Head into your Picture Control settings and switch to Monochrome. This is NOT FOR THE FINAL capture but to help you pre-visualize the final capture (shoot a B&W to remind you of the look you liked, but I do my B&W conversion in post from full spectrum image). You can see the settings I’ve dialed in. The most important is the last menu above where you have the Filter effects. I suggest you put the camera in S Advance firing mode and take one photo for each color filter. Then look at the images on your LCD. Hold the camera up so you can see the LCD and the REAL scene and start to compare what you see in both views. Look at highlights and shadows and the tones in between. Keep doing this over and over again whenever you’re out shooting and the thought comes across your creative conscious, “Would this work in B&W” and start to teach yourself to see the answer. Then, take it one step further.
Head into the digital darkroom and launch Nik Silverefex II and start clicking! Yep, you’re just playing while at the same time looking at the effect your playing with has on your image. Click on the prepackaged recipes on the left and look at the Global Adjustments being changed on the right. Then when you get it basically dialed into what you like, click on the Color Filters below (from the old Polycontrast days of the wet darkroom) and watch the changes in your image. Do this over and over again, teaching yourself to SEE how the shades of black and white change and YOUR preferences, likes and learn them. I wish this was the last step in the process, but this is just the first and most important to learning B&W. It will take out much of the struggle and make the rest of your learning easier. The one setting and slider though you’ll never find which is the most important, romance, is something you must apply from the start and carry it through until the very end!
It started long ago, a tradition from back in film days and thankfully it’s continued this summer. Alvin Sr. is an Allen’s Hummingbird and at the end of most summers, fledgling Allen’s come to our feeders in good numbers. But not every year do we have ones with the character of the original Alvin. This year’s crop of hummers have been a bit funny, I think in part because of the heavy days of wildfire smoke and our warmer temps. Things started to settle down this past week and when it was all done, well, there was Alvin Jr! He’s quite a character even chasing the Mtn Chickadees that come near “his” feeders. Finally, I got some Alvin time in and he’s a hoot to work with!
With the smoke being the heaviest in the afternoons, I changed up my shooting to the AM. There is a small window of time when the light comes in and backlights the perch I’ve got stuck in a Justin Clamp. The piece of Manzanita that I select for the perch has to have its own character as well as be small in diameter. I then left my tripod set up in the location I will eventually place the camera rig so he could get used to it. He instantly perched on the tripod so the break-in period was short! With that, I just need to attach the rig and shoot.
I changed the rig up this year shooting with the D5 / 180-400VR (@560mm) rather than the 300PF in the past. I did this for a couple of reasons. First is I just used the 180-400VR at Madera Canyon with great success. Second is while the 300PF can focus a couple of feet closer than the 180-400VR it’s too close for the hummer’s comfort range. With the 180-400VR I have more focal length at that comfort distance and therefore a bigger image size.
The goal of my shooting Alvin Jr. is more a character portrait then inflight shot. This means I use natural light rather than setting up the SB-5000s which makes it easier. The only downside at this moment is I’m getting Alvin Jr. use to my presence so I’m shooting remotely. With the WR-R10, I’m standing back about 15′ from the rig and when Alvin Jr. comes in, I fire. But I know it’s Alvin Jr. cause like his predecessors, he seems to like to give me directions! mtc
