Nature Unlimited, 28 August 2020

This is the additional weekly image thread for the Nature Forum. While images posted to this thread should still be nature in theme, it may contain a small amount of human-made objects and therefore less restricted than the Monday in Nature threads. Please see this discussion for more details: Alternative weekly thread in Nature forum

Each participant please post no more than just one image per weekly thread.

This week's kickoff image goes back to 2013, when I was first experimenting with my then-new D5100. I've revisited this image with a new PP process, taking better advantage of the coastal-environment-emphasizing heat shimmer and haziness. Not my usual approach, but interesting to experiment using newer skills and software to explore older images. Do you have an older image that's worth re-examination today?

 

Funny how that works - just a few days ago, I re-processed a few of my older images. This one is from 2009:

 

Yellowstone

There is evidence that the bison move in close to the Old Faithful Lodge during the night​

 

This week I was at White Rock Lake in Dallas....Snow Egret

 

How can the picture be so good with ancient equipment from over a decade ago? Modern PhotoShop must have enhanced it.

Was it captured with a Nikon D300 or something? That was a really good camera in its time, although today I would prefer to have more pixels and better low-light capability.

 

I used a D500 a few days ago, but the quality of the light wasn't good.

 

D300 with the slow-focusing and allegedly optically no-good AF-D 80-400. I also used the AF-S 300/4 with and without TC-14E that day and realized that the 300 alone barely focused any faster than the zoom (and was a tad short) - and, of course, the TC-14E made things worse. It was utterly frustrating to not be able to quickly and reliably establish and maintain focus. Yesterday I was out photographing Black Skimmers again (D500 and 500PF) - nice morning light but they refused to do any skimming.

The RAW file was difficult to deal with back then - the main change now was the application of Topaz Sharpen AI and Topaz DeNoise AI to overcome the use of ISO 1600 on a D300 (pretty much the limit of what that camera could do); even using that high ISO, the image is still about 1 1/2 stops underexposed. I must have made some four or five different versions of this image before settling on the final one. I actually have two nearly identical shots (one wing beat apart) that differ only by the angle of the bird in the frame and the position of its near wing: Black Skimmer (toned down from what the scene actually looked like).

 

kiss

 

Here is another image fro the Purple Martin Fly In on August 23. D850, Group AF, 300mm f2.8 lens , f3.5, 1/1250