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Showing posts from May 10, 2015

The Importance of Post-Processing Images

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I've been writing a lot about wildlife photography and posting many examples of bird photography in my recent blog posts. I am also in the process of writing a piece with tips for this type of photography. Until I publish that piece, I thought I would write about the importance of one of the tips I offer in that piece... the art of post-processing that needs to go into your images after you capture those images. There is no doubt that today's cameras can produce some beautiful images right out of the camera. Dynamic ranges are getting better with each new generation of digital cameras, tonal qualities continue to improve, sharpness and clarity continue to improve but there are still things which are out of our control which must be tweaked while there may be other things requiring a significant amount of post-processing.  I, myself, will post images right out of the camera especially while we are traveling. That doesn't mean that an image would not benefit from even som

Testing the Panasonic Lumix 45-200mm - part II

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About a week ago, I posted some photos of birds after my first 'practice session' in capturing photos of these fast little creatures with some new gear. That previous session was the first part of a series of tests of different parts of my gear used in different combinations.  (You can read that blog post here.) I'm testing some new Micro Four Thirds format photography gear to use for wildlife photography. I decided to give this format a shot after getting snagged in a few different obstacles in using other formats. So far, I have to say that this Micro Four Thirds gear is hitting a sweet spot for use in wildlife photography. This morning I happened to see a few more birds visiting my neighbor's back yard not far from one of our kitchen windows so I figured this would be a good time to test a different lens... today would be for the used lens I picked up a couple of weeks ago... the Panasonic Lumix 45-200mm Vario f4 -5.6 OIS lens.  Again, as I mentioned in my prev

Springtime

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I'd really love to find the energy to get up early... just before sunrise... grab my photography gear, including my tripod, and head out to shoot some early morning landscapes of the new spring growth... preferably on a morning with a dewy, misty, foggy, moody atmosphere as the sun begins to appear. Unfortunately, the weather has been rather lousy the past few days so I have no desire to get up early just to be frustrated and disappointed by attempting to shoot photos in the rain, with poor light, and generally lousy conditions. My health has been rather lousy the past few days as well and, when this happens, very little gets accomplished in my little world. I have, however, managed to capture a few photos of our spring season in the past few days. New leaves emerging from buds Now that the springtime rains have started, I don't think I'll be getting out there with my photography gear again until after most of the blooming has occurred. In the meantime, I have managed

A Happy Mother's Day

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The latest arrival for Mother's Day...  a bouquet of flowers arrived from Adam in Texas. As always, Sheila had a nice Mother's Day this year. The weather was fair most of the day which meant we could spend some time outdoors between rain showers. Whitney stopped by to wish her mom a Happy Mother's Day and drop off a nice gift.  Liza and the grandchildren stopped by to wish Sheila a Happy Mother's Day which provided Sheila with one of the best gifts of the day... Sheila got to spend some play time with the grandchildren!  Sheila's parents visited for a bit to wish Sheila a Happy Mother's Day. We wish they could have stayed longer but it was nice to see them and thoughtful of them to stop by to say hello. Today, flowers arrived from Adam wishing Sheila a Happy Mother's Day! Currently, Adam is in Wichita Falls, Texas fending off a long barrage of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes while finishing up his Technical Training. I've sent my fair sha

Atmospheric Pressure and Pain

As our atmospheric pressure drops due to a cold front with thunderstorms pushing down from Canada, the bone and joint pain caused by Systemic Mastocytosis has increased to an excruciating level last night. "Hyper-sensitivity" is the term of the day today.  Just some very light fingertip pressure is enough to cause sharp pains shooting through my body causing me to flinch and respond vocally.  The pain... all through my entire body... was at its worst last night at bedtime. That being said, I could have been more sensitive to the pain because I was exhausted. All I know is that when we went to bed last night, I felt as though I had something very seriously wrong with all my organs, all my bones... I felt as though I had just been hit by a train and was thrown aside like a rag doll... badly bruised... smashed like a tomato thrown against the pavement. All through the night, I had dreams of being in pain. My dreams took me to some places in my past where these injuries first