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Shot at Victoria Butterfly Gardens
Shot at Victoria Butterfly Gardens
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Jan, 2012Views
1047
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Awards
Top Shot Award 21
Featured
Superb Composition
Absolute Masterpiece
Top Choice
Outstanding Creativity
Exceptional Contrast
Superior Skill
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Top 20 rankTop 20 rank week 2Top 10 rank week 1
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Ultimate
akhtarkhan
February 15, 2012
Incredible macro detail, awesome colours, excellent capture....well done! Congrats on the feature and welcome to VB.
streetmanphoto
February 15, 2012
Wow! Being featured is so cool and an honour.
Thank you all for your comments. Every one of them is appreciated. Also, thank you for the welcome to VB.
Thank you all for your comments. Every one of them is appreciated. Also, thank you for the welcome to VB.
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streetmanphoto
February 17, 2012
Thank you all so much very the congrats, comments and welcome to VB. They are all appreciated:)
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Behind The Lens
Location
Victoria Butterfly Gardens, Victoria BCTime
Around 2 pmLighting
What was nice about the lighting that day was high cloud that diffusing the natural light. Even though this was taken indoors, the area where the flamingos were that day was filled with sunlight because of the glass ceiling.Equipment
Tripod mounted Pentax K10D with a SMC Pentax DAL 55-300 ED lens that had a Hoya UV 58 mm filter on it. Shooting in aperture priority I took several bracketed shots. This one was the sharpest. F10, 260mm, 1/40 sec, ISO 200, Cloudy White Balance, PEF (Pentax's RAW format).Inspiration
Just before seeing this I had taken a couple of shots from the side. They were ok but the green of the plants seemed to take away from the pic. When I came around to the front of the water area, towards the back, here was this resting flamingo, lit by natural light, set against this black background. The contrast was great and I knew for this shot to work two things had to happen. The form of the flamingo's shape had to strike a balance with the black background and the eye had to be open looking directly at the camera.Editing
Post-processing the shot was done with Adobe's Camera Raw slightly adjusting contrast, sharpening, shadows and warming the temperature settings. In Photoshop I applied linear contrast. Opened onOne's Photo Tools (now called Perfect Effects) and applied a hi-pass sharpening filter being careful not to over sharpen the image.In my camera bag
In my bag I carry a Pentax K10D, Pentax K-x, SMC Pentax DAL 55-300 ED, SMC Pentax DAL 16-45 ED, wired remote, several lint free cloths, spare batteries, spare SD cards, Dust Blower, Lens Pen, UV and Polarizer filters for both lenses.Feedback
The one thing you should always try to do, when taking pictures of animals is to spot focus on the eye(s) as much as possible. This will help your pictures because we as humans relate to the eyes as a window into others, human or animal. Remember what you leave out of a picture is as important as what you leave in. What you do not see in the flamingo shot is the plant life around it, the water it is standing in and the other flamingos a few feet away. Pay attention to the background. How your subject is placed in it will make or break the photo.
