Snowbirds

It snowed yesterday, and for me that means either dramatic landscapes or birds. I chose birds, so I headed over to my local nature center to catch the activity.

Click on the image below to take you to a slideshow of a selection of nice photos I captured in the span of about an hour.



Main Site: Photography by Matt Schrier

Ocean City Morning

It was a beautiful morning last weekend along the New Jersey coast. I like the winter trips to catch sunrises because the sun rises so late. A 7:15 sunrise allows me to wake-up as late as 5:00 and still get down there in time to position myself for a nice sequence of shots.

This morning the pre-sunrise color was not that great, even though I thought the light cloud cover would provide very nice colors. But I got a good 30-40 minutes of a fantastic post-sunrise sky. I was very glad to have this because it took me much longer than I thought to locate the old 59th Street pier. I thought I was going to completely miss any good shots but I was able to get a couple of very nice ones.

Below are two choice photos from that morning.







Site: Photography by Matt Schrier
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Adobe Lightroom

I have been a Photoshop user for years. Although I am not an expert I am able to execute most of the image processing that I need to do for my captures. But as powerful a tool that Photoshop is almost everything you do is tedious. Despite the fact that this software has been around for so many years it was never tailored or tweaked for ease-of-use. For example the image adjustment actions that are most frequently used (e.g. curves, contract, color balance, etc.) are always at least 2 clicks away in the menu structure. (Image -> Adjustments -> etc.)

I have known about Lightroom for a while, but never decided to actually purchase and use it. So when I saw this package for sale at a deep discount around Thanksgiving I just had to bite. I've just installed the software and have only used it for a few days, but I think I'm going to be very happy (and productive) with Lightroom.

For example Lightroom allows you to make quick B&W/monotone conversions of your color originals, as seen below. The process took me only a few minutes, and I had much more control over the process than I ever had before.



This is what the editing panel looks like. Each section contains nicely arranged groups of controls that make adjustments a breeze. All of this can be done with Photoshop but you need a lot of experience and/or training to get the same work done.



Original image files are not modified during the editing process. The adjustments are applied on top of the originals. This reduces excessive disk-space use, and prevents accidental over-writing of original files (which I am guilty of doing on occasion)

Lightroom has organizational tools that allow you to label and locate images much more easily even if your library includes many thousands of images.

There are many other benefits that I have not explored yet. I'll be learning these over the new few weeks and months. I expect to be more productive and to create a larger variety of images during this process.

Intimate

It is now past the fall foliage season, and although we are not yet into the cold, barren months of winter the scenery has mostly lost its color and the morning air is very cold. On this morning I was on the lookout for some macro shots that required me to get "up close and personal" with the subject matter, possibly something involving frost.

After driving aimlessly for a little while I ended up at a small local pond that usually does not offer much besides the occasional heron or egret. I played around with different compositions and focus variations until I was able to create some interesting images of the wild growth along the water's edge in combination with the sun's reflection on the pond. I like the abstract feeling of these shots.







Main website: Photography by Matt Schrier

Prallsville Mill

This is an iconic pair of buildings in Stockton NJ, right along the canal. A storm was brewing, and the lighting was perfect for just a short time. A few minutes later the dark clouds make this shot impossible.



(Click on the image to enlarge)

Heron in Flight

Capturing birds in flight is a fun and exciting activity for a wildlife photographer. At a local pond I was "tracking" a blue heron near the water's edge. (Not really tracking - just sneaking up on it - but "tracking" sounds much more impressive) As I approached it, hidden by some weeds, I was ready with my 150-500mm lens. As expected my footsteps roused it and it flew away, but I was able to capture this image with water still dripping from its foot.

New Photos Posted

I uploaded ten new images to my website, created over the past few months. Take a look.

(Click the image below)

Walkaround Tyler

I tried something a little different. I drug myself out of bed rather early this morning and headed towards Tyler Park, walking down a different path than I normally take. I've stopped concentrating so much on birds and wildlife and am trying to look for compositions involving other subjects.

Below are two pretty common sights at Tyler park, and I worked them a bit in post-processing to highlight the central subject.


"Weathered Birdbox"


"Forever Yours"

Tyler Birds

My postings are pretty infrequent these days. That's mostly because I've been spending much of my spare time working to lose a few pounds. So far so good in that department, but unfortunately that comes at the expense of my photography.

A few weeks ago there was a nice morning light so I was off to Tyler Park to see what was happening there. The birds were very active, and they let me get fairly close - with the exception of their nests (man-made bird boxes). When I got too close to them to shoot the baby birds I was quickly attacked by the adults. I didn't press the issue, and abandoned my efforts.

Here are a few shots from that morning.





Main Site: Photography by Matt Schrier

Ireland 2

So its been a while since my original post on our trip to Ireland, and I want to follow-up with a few more photos and some thoughts on what worked well and not so well.

Ireland is a fantastic place. Outside of a few large cities this country lives up to its name - the Emerald Isle. The green fields and meadows go on for miles, usually dotted with numerous sheep or cows.

In no particular order here are things that worked out really well for us:

• Great Weather - It barely rained on us at all. It did get a bit hazy, which put a damper on some of our sightseeing on the western coast.


• Croagh Patrick - My wife and son climbed the same 2000 ft mountain that St. Patrick climbed. They were rewarded with fantastic panoramic vistas. I was not up for such a climb, since I was a bit hobbled with a knee injury. But I may try it if we return.


• The car - We rented a stick-shift and of course drove on the left side of the road. This was no problem for me, even though I had some apprehension about it. We got great mileage in our diesel powered Toyota, so that took the sting off of the high European fuel prices.


• The roundabouts - I love them. Why put a traffic light at an intersection when you can put a roundabout which leaves it up to the drivers to control the traffic flow themselves rather than forcing everyone to stop at fixed intervals.


• Road Layout - All roads leads to town centers. This simplifies things - you usually don't have to think too hard to the main business district of a town (except for the bigger cities).


• The seal on Achill Island - We found a lone seal at desolate Keem beach on the western end of Achill Island. He didn't care too much for us getting too close to him, but we managed to take a lot of pictures before he worked his way through the waves back into the sea.
  

Now for some things that could have been better:

• Falling and Breaking a Camera - Yes, I did that. Three days into the trip I was (stupidly) climbing on a rock wall along a country road. I lost my footing and fell 2 feet onto the road surface. I had little chance to break my fall or shield my DSLR, so both my right knee and the camera hit the road hard. The lens on the camera took the full force of the impact and broke in half. The camera case cracked but survived in fairly good shape thankfully. My knee was seriously bruised, but I could walk. Fortunately there were no cars on the road at the time, or else I might not be here to tell the story.


• The back-roads - No shoulders, lined with rock walls, curving this way and that. Driving any distance on the 3- or 4-digit numbered back-roads can be very frustrating. If you get behind a cyclist, tractor, or truck this can really slow you down for miles. Avoid these roads if at all possible


• The Dublin Airport - Not user friendly. First of all no signage to the rental car return area. Then, we checked in on the ground floor, up two floors to the (slow) security area, then onto the US customs pre-check, which was back down to the ground floor, a long wait, then another security area. What a pain in the butt.


• Driving expenses - Expensive gas, and the extra rental insurance (just to be safe).


• Poor drive planning - A few days we planned for WAY too much driving. For example we attacked the Dingle peninsula AND the Ring of Kerry on same day. The Ring of Kerry is definitely a full-day trip, so we ended up back at the cottage near midnight, driving through the super-curvy roads of the national forest in the dead of night.


• No GPS - In retrospect we should have bought the Europe maps for our Tom Tom for $70 or so. It would have been worth it.

Lodging - We stayed 6 days in a beautiful cottage west of Limerick, and cooked many of our own meals to save a good bit of money. The cottage itself was VERY affordable. But being so centrally located meant we had to drive a good distance each day, because we weren't really near anything. That reduced our sightseeing time and increased our fuel costs. But I still liked it.