This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
Here is one of the many bluebirds I saw in Yellowstone recently. I’ve added him and a few others to my website today. You can see the them by clicking here and then using the right arrow on your keyboard. You may need to click on the web page before you can use your right arrow to move to the next image.
When I’m in Yellowstone in May I usually see a few mountain bluebirds and I usually try to get a decent photo of one. I haven’t had much success until this year. I’ve had some incredible opportunities this time. I don’t know why this year has been different, but the number of bluebirds I’ve seen this year is much, much higher than I’ve seen before.
I photographed this male while waiting for the mother pronghorn just inside the north entrance (Roosevelt Arch) to come back to her young and feed and move them.
I photographed this female at the same time.
Mom finally showed up and fed and moved her babies. She hid them far from each other. I think that is to increase the odds of fawn survival. When she finished feeding and hiding them I went back to the bluebirds.
If I like a photo enough to print or post on the web one of the first things I do to get it ready for use is a color correction step to identify any color casts. Actually, I do two steps. The first step neutralizes color casts in the blacks and whites and the second does that in the middle grays. Photos taken during normal daylight hours don’t normally have much of a color cast. However, there is usually some color cast and I almost always remove it. Of course, the time around sunrise and sunset is another story. I still do the color correction steps, but rarely remove the color cast caused by the sun being low in the horizon. To get that color cast is why we get out there so early and stay out there so late. This bluebird was photographed as the sun was disappearing below the horizon. I have not removed the color cast in the above image.
I thought it would be interesting to show what this photo looks like after neutralizing the color cast caused by the setting sun. Here’s the same photo as above, but with the color cast completely removed. The photo now looks “more normal” because we usually see bluebirds in normal daylight.
There is a third photo below. It looks more like the first photo, but it isn’t the exact same image. After I did the color correction steps described above I toggled the black and white correction and the middle gray correction on and off and found that I preferred the look of the image with black and white color corrected, but with middle gray not corrected. Note how the white breast compares in all three photos. Obviously, correcting for middle gray had the most effect. Personally, I think I prefer the third image.
I see a lot of meadowlarks at the Seashore, but they are as skittish as bluebirds. I can never get a lens on one. I finally succeeded.
I haven’t been out there in a while. With the recent rains and short days wildlife sightings should be very good now.
I’m almost done upgrading my website. Having to search for the master file for every image on my website so I can enlarge it has caused me to look at nearly all the images I have and that has taken a lot of time. It’s been very beneficial though because I’ve found a number of images that I should have put on my website when I took the photos. This little bluebird is one. It has everything I look for in a good wildlife photo. It has an appealing subject, good body position/pose, good light, good color and a clean, out-of-focus background. No distractions. It’s now on my website. To see the upgraded/larger image click here.
I’ve added a number of other overlooked images as well. The tule elk portfolio is a good example. I’ve added about 10 new images to that portfolio. I’ve also removed several.
One thing I’ve realized doing the web upgrade is that I’ve not been paying enough attention to my website since I started doing this blog. I’m probably not the only photo blogger doing that. Keeping current with my website seems like a good New Year resolution.
This young barn swallow and its sibling were being fed by their parents when I came by. As with many critters, especially young ones, they were willing to sit tight when there was food to be had. If not for the food I probably wouldn’t have gotten the photo.
I was near Tower Falls last spring waiting to photograph a black bear that had decided to take a nap. I waited for a couple of hours. Nothing. The only living creature near me then was this robin that looked unhappy with my presence.
