Squaco Heron Leaving – Phillip Grobler

You often see images in magazines or at club evenings and think why cant I ever see such nice sightings. Then when you have the chance to go into the wild there is just nothing happening. Getting up at 4am so that you are ready when the first rays of the sun breaks, waiting and then nothing, no animals in sight, no birds, nothing.

If you do see anything for the day its only after 10 when the sun is high in the sky and the light is harsh.

It's easy to think some people have all the luck, but most of the time it has more to-do with perseverance and planning.

Beginning of 2012 we went to Marievale, just outside of Nigel, a couple of times and saw Malachite kingfishers on every outing and got some stunning shots of them. So over the December break I was quite keen to go back and get some more Malachite shots. With a years worth of extra practice I was hoping to catch them in flight or in mid dive. But as these things go the Malachites where scarce only popping by briefly and them being chased away by the swallow and the clouds and not play along either. Over the Christmas break I went to Marievale 6 times.

Each time getting up at 4am getting ready, driving 100km in the dark looking at the clouds in sky's hoping all stays clear and that there is no wind. If all looks clear you begin to hope that there is space left in the hide. Once there you setup and then begin to wait, for the sun, for the birds, for the clouds, if everything is in place for the birds to actually move, so that its not just a static shot. You basicly sit arround waiting for 4 hours from 05:30 until 09:30.

The first 4 outings where quite unsuccessfull with little activity or only activity on the reeds on the far side.

Then on 2013/01/01 4am I was on my way again eternally optimistic that today would be the day, and indeed it was. It sounds silly, but we only waited an hour before the first Sqauco Heron came closer to the hide. Initially sitting to the right of the hide and then flying over to the perch right in front of the hide to catch a large tadpole. It went back and forth 3 or 4 times and then flew of.

Shortly afterwards the Malachite kingfisher arrived and sat around for about 10 minutes diving into the water 3 times, before leaving.

We then sat around some more until 08:40 when the a second Sqauco Heron made its clearance, again coming right up-to the hide, so close that the bird filled the frame at 200mm on a crop camera. a Number of big lens shooters with 500mm and 800mm lenses could only sit and watch as the action was so close they could not focus on it.

That one day made up for all 5 the other days where we saw nothing and will probably keep me motivated for another 5 trips.

The technical details:

• Canon 50D
  
• Canon 70-200 2.8L IS II USM
  
• Focal length: 200mm      
  
• ISO: 400 - To allow for faster shutter speed
  
• Shutter Speed : 1/2000 – To be able to freeze the movement. - For smaller birds it might not be enough, but for larger birds its fast enough. the wings might still blur somewhat.
  
• Aperture: F/4.0 - with bigger birds you often need higher Aperture otherwise you often only have part of the bird in-focus.
  
• Aperture priority
  
• Spot metering
  
• Mounted on a tripod - for stability especially, when going over 300mm it is almost always sharper if you shoot from a fixed support.

ISO/Shutter Speed/Aperture is often a compromise between noise/depth of field and motion blur 

Phillip Grobler 3*

Marakele View–Phillip Grobler

I was quite keen to go to Marakele as I have seen a number of stunning photos taken at Marakele and the camp site is not fenced allowing the animals to move through the camp-site.

Especially the Rhino visit the camp site regularly and walk among the tents and caravans. There is also a water hole about 500m from the camp sites and the Zebra/Kudu/Impala can be seen looking out of your tent.

We got some stunning rhino shots right outside our tent. At the other end of the reserve you can drive up the mountain to a looking point with a fairly large vulture colony.

The aim driving up to the lookout point was to try and get shots of the vultures, but they proved elusive and never came close enough to make a good shot. The view from the mountain however was stunning with both beautiful sunrises and sun sets.

The photo was taken at 16:50 into the sun. With the sky correctly exposed but with the foreground quite under exposed.

The technical details:

• Canon 1Ds III
• Canon 17-40 F/4
• Focal length   : 17mm (Giving a ultra wide view on the FF body allowing the vastness of the scene to be visible)
• ISO : 100 (Choose low ISO to reduce noise and since there was lots of light.)
• Shutter Speed  : 1/400
• Aperture : F/10.0 (Used a small aperture for more Depth of field) 
• Aperture priority
• Spot metering - took metering against the sky to prevent losing highlights
• Mounted on a tripod - I initially wanted to take make HDR image

I then processed the RAW image in Lightroom setting

• Highlights : +100

• Shadows : -100

Shooting in RAW allows a lot more room for processing afterwards especially to recover highlights or shadow detail. The original RAW result, before processing, is shown on the right.

Phillip Grobler 3*

Last Petal – Ruby Braumann

The bottom of our garden is a patch where my hubby scatters seeds and everything grows in wild profusion. So we often have cosmos there - it keeps re-seeding itself. It's great to wander down there in the late afternoon as the sun slants warmly across the flowers. I have taken umpteen photos there, especially when the bees are busy.

Late October last year, I took my trusty Nikon D80 with my Nikkor 105mm Micro lens affixed, and found this flower, almost spent. The light was beautiful, and I took several photos until, with settings of aperture f8, shutter speed 1/80 and ISO 200, I caught this one. I think I was just hand-holding my camera, so I was lucky to get this so sharp. For me, what makes the photo is the soft, blurred background, the strong shadow on the last petal, and the bright yellow (actual) flowers that seem to float at the top of the composite flower.

Post-processing was minimal - a little cropping and tweaking of levels, contrast and saturation.

As Maartin always says - 'Less is more' - the simplicity of the photograph is what catches the eye.

Ruby Braumann

Blou Reier Landing – Maartin Coetser

Die foto is geneem by Sunset Dam, Onder Sabie in die Kruger Wildtuin net na 09h00 in die oggend. Die Blou Reiers vlieg daar rond en gaan sit op die seekoeie om vis te vang. Ek dink dis vir hulle ‘n gerieflike plek om te sit want die seekoeie is nie gepla daaroor nie en daar is seker ook meer vis verder die dam in as naby die kant.

Ek het probeer om bietjie aksie vas te vang om my fotos meer trefkrag te gee en het heelwat fotos geneem waar hulle vlieg, land en selfs in die lug baklei asook wanneer hulle ‘n vis gevang het. Ek het ook ander goeie fotos gekry maar met baie steurende agtergrond.

Hierdie foto was een waarvan ek gehou het want die lig was baie mooi op die voël.

Die foto is geneem in RAW teen 1000e Sek. met Lensopening f8 en ISO 400 met ½ stop onderbelig om te verhoed dat die wit op die voël nie oorbelig nie.

Kamera is ‘n Pentax K5 en lens ‘n Sigma 150-500 Zoom. (Daar is ouens wat beweer dat hierdie lense nie skerp is nie waarmee ek natuurlik nie saamstem nie.)

Omtrent tweederdes van die foto is weggesny en een derde is gebruik omdat selfs vir die 500 mm. lens die toneeltjie bietjie ver was.

Baie min prossesering is gedoen, “Levels”, “Saturation” en “Sharpening” asook donker dele ligter gemaak met “Dodge Tool” en ligte dele met “Burn Tool”

Met hierde tipe fotos is liefde vir die natuur en baie geduld wat my betref deurslaggewend.

Maartin Coetser

Foto: Blou Reier Landing, Klubaand 14 Januarie 2013, Meriete sertifikaat in Meesters Goud.

CCC Website – Member login

I have noticed that there are a number of club members that do not make use of the web interface at the club.  The general section of the web site, gives members and visitors all the information required to participate in the club activities.  So firstly, please browse around and see what is available.

You can Google the club or simply go to the web www.centurioncameraclub.co.za 

If you are reading this, then you have already found the club Blog.  Make sure that you have subscribed and submitted your email on the right hand panel of the Blog.  You must remember to accept/confirm the invitation that will be sent to you once you have submitted your email.

Members can now login with the EMMA member number and password that has been given to you or you can request that a password is emailed to you. Simply select the Member Login Tab to proceed.

On this section, you can also request that a password is emailed to you.

Once you have logged in, please update your personal information and note all the available tabs that will give you more specific club information, not available to the general public.  Update your personal information and tell us more about the equipment that you are using.

We are in the process of verifying salon data and will welcome any corrections in this regard.

Try it and give us feedback.

Gossiping Girls

I recently attended a short course in studio photography and more specifically on how to setup lights and pose a model. The last evening of the course I managed to get two models and various props which could be used during the shoot.

Starting the Shoot

We were a small group of photographers each given a turn to take pictures of the individual models, posing them and playing around with light setups. While browsing through my images I noticed two of the photographers in the group more interested in talking about things not related to the shoot. I am not sure what they were talking about but it gave the impression there were some gossiping. That is when I got the idea of doing a gossip photo.

Making the Photo

After everybody had a turn to take photos and we came to the end of the class I called the two models and asked them to pose together and pretend they see somebody and then start talking about that person. I must admit, the models were playing together and acted brilliantly. They immediately understood what to do (maybe it is a girl thing). I took some photos and decided to add the umbrellas and masks. The idea was to give the girls the typical "rich-high-class" look.

For this picture, only one light, an Elinchrom beauty dish 72 cm was used. It was placed just to the front-right of the model on the right side of the picture. A small white reflector was placed just to the left of the model on the left. As you will see later, this reflector did its job but also caused some light on the background. I was limited in available backgrounds and for this particular image a dark grey background was used. 

To get the background as dark possible, the models were moved forward so that less light will fall onto the background. The Elinchrom 500 Watt was set to level 4. The camera settings were ISO 100, f9, 1/125th.

Several pictures were taken but this one was my final choice.

 

Post Processing

The image required a lot of post processing like;

• Removing the white ends of the umbrellas
• Correct the reflection (over exposure) of the silver parts of the umbrellas caused by the flash
• Correct the over exposure and reflection of the masks on their faces caused by the flash and the very reflective masks
• The orange umbrella gave an orange reflection in the silver parts of the blue umbrella
• The backdrop was not black or dark enough

All of these were corrected using Lightroom 4 and Elements 10 en then cropped. I was happy with the final result but having a second look at the image a while later I thought of adding a sepia tone to it. For me the sepia tone gave an older look and contributed to the image and the "rich-classy-look" became the "years ago-rich-classy-look". The only problem was the clothing was to modern and I added an off-centre vignetting effect to highlight the faces of the model and not so much their clothing.

Final Image

The final image did very well for me in the club and gave me a COM, month winner and also best image of the year 2012.

Lessons learned

In terms of photography I realized again that we need to create / make a photo. I would never have thought of doing a "gossip" shoot as a theme but taking the immediate environment into consideration, taking notice of the two photographers talking and just think hey what if the two models were talking and not concentrating on the shoot resulted in a very interesting opportunity.

Another big lesson learned, was that backups must be made regularly. After submitting the image for the club evening I had a disk crash and lost some photos and this was one of them. It was only over the holiday period, preparing for another photo shoot that I found a memory card which was not used for some time and the original RAW file was there. I found the original image and had to redo the post-processing.

Summary

Although the girls were not professional models and have only done a few shoots, they were fantastic. Thanks to Francois Venter and Zoe Scholtz for arranging the models for me.

Francois Kotze

New competition entry format

I trust most club members are back working and ready to enter all the holiday photos for a deserving COM at the club.  We are excited about our planned move into HD format for our club competitions as it allows a much better representation of the photos due to the better resolution.  The current format is simply outdated as even the most basic camera will record at better resolutions.

The new format will have a minor effect on members, apart from the fact that we will have to remember to use the new format when the photo is resized and submitted to EMMA.  The maximum size is now 1920 pixels wide x 1080 pixels high and the new maximum file size is 1.5Mb.  The file format is still the same JPG and users must remember to submit photos using the sRGB colour space as before.  This new HD size will format will be implemented from our February competition.

The old format 1024 x 768 will still be accepted by EMMA as before, but the display on the screen will be small as it will only fill approximately 75% of the available screen area.  This will therefore be difficult to judge compared to the bigger photos.  These photos will however not be disqualified.

This change to the HD format will be discussed in more detail at the club evening on Jan 14th as well at the “Kuieraand” on January 28th, see the calendar for more information.  Members are welcome to send specific questions to Chris, which he can answer at the club evening.

Looking forward to see the HD images!