Clovis' Nikon Nuggets

Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
Decided to head back out to Cypress Gardens this morning while the weather is still nice. The ospreys were nest building.

I like this one, but I think I need to rework it. The right wing looks overprocessed. I did a version in B&W that I like as well, but can't decide which I like better. Kind of pushing the edge of cropping, and bringing up shadow detail with this one.

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If you look closely, you will see that the male duck has an injured/deformed foot.

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Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
OK, after taking a break and drooling over new camera bodies, I decided to try my hand at the first osprey image remake. I think I got it mostly right this time. At any rate, it's a big improvement.


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And here's the B&W version. I may like this one better than the color version.


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Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
Blue439 said:
Lovely photos. What a picturesque place!
Click to expand...
Thanks. There are several barrier islands on the coast here that have their treelines eroding into the surf. This is one of the closest to me (1 1/2 hour drive) with easy access. You have to plan carefully as the beach is not accessible at higher tides, and you have to plan to a certain level of outgoing tide with the sunrise. The gate opens 1/2 hour before official sunrise, so you have to hustle to drive to the area from the gate when it opens, grab your gear and hike 1/2 mile to the beach to be ready to shoot when the sun starts to peak over the horizen. You are also at the mercy of the cloud cover for spectacular color in the sky. The best light only lasts about 30 minutes or so. Between storms and constant erosion, you never know what to expect when you get there. This particular beach was much better before last season when they suddenly lost a large portion of the beach, which dumped a large number of trees onto the upper beach.

We had pretty decent sky color this weekend. A little more cloud cover would have been nice, but more often than not, there is little to no clouds. This shot was nearly at the end of the nice warm colors, but the wispy white clouds add some interest. This shot was taken about 25 minutes after we hit the beach.

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Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
The Pup and I went over to Cypress Gardens this morning. Didn't get much. I was excited to see a barred owl sitting peacefully in a tree very close to the trail. He stayed there quite a while. The main problem was the lighting. Very heavily backlit. I gave it an extra stop of compensation, but I probably should have bracketed, and perhaps could have made an HDR out of it. I played around with the background and even added a sky replacement, but it still looks a bit contrived to me. So far, this is the best I can do with it. There wasn't much there to work with.


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Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
Got out to the Francis Beidler Forest today. The prothonotary warblers were in bloom. A couple owls showed up as well as a few water snakes.

Light levels were really low, forcing very high ISOs, especially earlier in the morning. Topaz will clean them up, but they definitely lose detail.

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Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
The Pup and I took a trip up to Swan Lake in Sumpter, SC, while the weather is still cool. Had a good time. I tried out another ICM experiment.

This was the straight shot.

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These were the ICMs. The first using the zoom, and the second turning the camera.

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Also got some birds. Pileated woodpeckers are hard to get shots of around here.

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Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
Well, the insects are just starting to show up in my small backyard wildflower plot. This was my first try this year at insect photography, and I am rusty at it. It doesn't help that the subjects are few and far between. I normally would have sent this image to the round file, but I'll post it because it is the first of the season. Right now I mostly have very small flowers blooming. There are a few larger plants that are budding out, and should bloom soon. I don't expect a lot of activity for several weeks to a month.

This has a lot of should-of's. Unfortunately, he didn't stick around long enough for me to take more shots. I am confident things will improve from here. Had some very pretty damsel flies hang around for a while, but they were too skittish to get close to.

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Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
Well, the insect activity in my backyard wildflower plot is slowly increasing. I was lured out by a black and yellow beetle on a deep purple flower, but he took off as soon as I started shooting, and I only got one poorly focused shot. I looked around before giving up and discovered this harvestman clinging patiently on a flower stem.

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The wildflowers are coming along. Not sure how well the native seed mix will attract insects compared to the "pollinator" commercial mix I planted last year. To hedge my bets, I planted one area with the native, and the rest with the same pollinator mix from last year. I also have part of the pollinator patch that I seeded last October, and part that was planted early March.

Here's a quick and dirty shot of part of the plot.

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Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
Got up early and headed over to Magnolia. The birds were very active.

Was talking with a friend from the CNPA and this guy flew by. I just threw the camera to eye and tracked and fired. I checked the first couple of the string on the back of the camera and thought the Z8 didn't lock and track. It took a few frames to settle, but the rest of the string was reasonably sharp, again too low a shutter speed. I had just shot a few static shots, and didn't switch to something higher.

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Whistling duck checking out the crazy cameraman.


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Crazy turtles checking out each other.

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Surprised to see a prothonotary warbler at magnolia.

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