Costa Rica issues?

PHXAZCRAIG said:

You have some general guidelines for PP your bird images? (Also when resizing for web?)

I've got some nice owl shots, but I'm disappointed in my PP skills and can't do them justice.

Click to expand...

• My editing is simple as it gets, here is a quick rundown..

raymondbarlow2 said:

PHXAZCRAIG said:

You have some general guidelines for PP your bird images? (Also when resizing for web?)

I've got some nice owl shots, but I'm disappointed in my PP skills and can't do them justice.

Click to expand...

• My editing is simple as it gets, here is a quick rundown..

Open with CS3, raw file in ACR... tweak white balance, exposure, recovery, fill, contrast, add titch of vibrance, and saturation, click open.

Clone out dust bunnies, twig, dirt on beak, minor issues if needed, then crop to 1920 x 1200 x 72 dpi., select subject with quick selection tool, touch of sharpening with focus magic, add 30pt signature for desktop widescreen use.

delete sig., resize to 900 pix wide, sharpen subject a titch, add 3 pix of white to canvas, and 5 pix of grey to canvas, 12pt signature, merge layers, and that is it!

I never spend more then 3-5 minutes on an image.,

Click to expand...

Bobby Handal said:

Hello Ray !
My best suggestion to you is:
a) insect repellent (not smelly kind)

b) hire a local guide in each rain forest , do not hire a guide for the whole country. Why? because local guides (guarda foresta - guarda recursos) usually know exactly where to find the birds/ animals, know exactly what trees have the fruit and are bearing the fruit at that particular time, and this therefore will attract the birds and animals.

Tell him that if he finds ... say a Quetzal or whatever you are looking for, you will give him a good bonus !. This works wonders.

If a forest has many "senderos" or paths, consider hiring "watch people" and hand them radios so that they can spot the animals or birds you are looking for.

All of the above is really not expensive at all and helps this poor people income. Everyone wins.

Local people will spot local birds so much better than you will. You say, well a quetzal is a quite large bird and colorful, it will be easy to spot.... je je je yeah sure.
it is not.

So bring those cheap two way radios with rechargeable batteries for them.

The above tips are great if you want to do it the "easy way".

Ray, I would take the better beamer, you loose nothing by taking it. Specially the Quetzal , the shine of the feathers just pops out . These birds are not at the top of trees but at mid level, where they are darker areas.

good luck and enjoy!! my friend.

--



http://www.hondurasart.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=2180

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Tom Kilroy said:

One things for sure you already have one of the best guides in Costa Rica. Six of us from Albuquerque recently joined 5 other folks from around the world on one of Greg's trips for the second year in a row. The shooting was great and we had lots of opportunities to photograph Quetzals.

If the opportunity presents itself go to the Tarcoles river and take a morning boat ride.

--
Tom

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PHXAZCRAIG said:

raymondbarlow2 said:

PHXAZCRAIG said:

You have some general guidelines for PP your bird images? (Also when resizing for web?)

I've got some nice owl shots, but I'm disappointed in my PP skills and can't do them justice.

Click to expand...

• My editing is simple as it gets, here is a quick rundown..

Open with CS3, raw file in ACR... tweak white balance, exposure, recovery, fill, contrast, add titch of vibrance, and saturation, click open.

Clone out dust bunnies, twig, dirt on beak, minor issues if needed, then crop to 1920 x 1200 x 72 dpi., select subject with quick selection tool, touch of sharpening with focus magic, add 30pt signature for desktop widescreen use.

delete sig., resize to 900 pix wide, sharpen subject a titch, add 3 pix of white to canvas, and 5 pix of grey to canvas, 12pt signature, merge layers, and that is it!

I never spend more then 3-5 minutes on an image.,

Click to expand...

Wow - sounds like you have the process down to do that much so quickly. I'm working with NX2 these days (need to reinstall Photoshop eventually), and I'm comfortable with curves and saturation. It's the sharpening aspects that I'm concerned with mostly - it's difficult to tell if my images are not as sharp as I'd like because I shoot with an 80-400vr, or if I'm just not getting them sharpened correctly in post. I've not heard of focus magic before.

Thanks for the info.

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