DPS 10-04: Photoshop CS6 tips, Texas trip report & announcement, Airport TakeOff reviewed, new Nikon Flash book reviewed

DPS 10-04: Photoshop CS6 tips, Texas trip report & announcement, Airport TakeOff reviewed, new Nikon Flash book reviewed

Submitted by David Cardinal on Fri, 05/25/2012 - 00:00

Welcome to DPS 10-04, April/May, 2012: New tips on using Photoshop CS6, Think Tank Airport TakeOff bag review, new book on Nikon CLS Flash reviewed.

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Texas is definitely not all about deserts! This private, pristine stretch of the Guadalupe River that we photographed was also where we photographed Summer Tanager on our .

Welcome to DPS 10-04, April/May, 2012: New tips on using Photoshop CS6, Think Tank Airport TakeOff bag review, new book on Nikon CLS Flash reviewed.

Event Updates: (or, including Photoshop CS6 tips)

We still have an opening for our unique July Alaska Bear and Puffin safaris so now is a good time to sign up. You can read my or just if you'd like to join us.

There is no better trip of a lifetime than our , which we're offering in Nov/Dec, 2012: We're accepting deposits for the Botswana trip and it is already half full. It features three of the very best safari camps in all of Africa, so if you've been waiting for the perfect time to go on that safari of a lifetime, this is it! If you have any quesionts, please let us know by emailing safaris [at] cardinalphoto.com.

Our  is almost full, so if you'd like to join us don't dawdle. Myanmar is going through some of the most positive and exciting changes of any country in the world. Texas Photo Safaris trip report & 2013 Announcements!

Texas 2013: I'm just back from two very successful photo safaris in Texas. I started with a small group at the excellent BCNA in the Hill Country. These adjacent ranches feature not just carefully crafted blinds and alternate wildlife settings (including a pond of Whistling Ducks), but great accommodations & home cooking. We had plenty of birds although the specialty species were a little slow for the first couple days. Eventually though we were treated to excellent opportunities with Painted Bunting, Summer Tanager and Vermillion Flycatcher. We've scheduled next year's trip to be a little later, which should give us more of the migrant species. You can put down an .


Summer Tanager from our Hill Country Safari
Nikon D700, 200-400mm f/4 lens w. TC-14E

My next stop was the always birdy Rio Grande Valley, where we spent time on three different private ranches and again had the benefit of excellent home-cooking. Participants photographed over 40 different woodland species during the 5 days, making this visit one of our birdiest ever. Everyone got plenty of Painted Bunting, with some gettting Indigo, Varied and Lark Buntings as well. Scissor-tail Flycatchers were abundant, as were Orioles, Green Jays, Harris Hawks, and Crested Caracara -- along with usual residents like Bobwhite, Scaled Quail, Northern Cardinal, Pyrrhuloxia and plenty of doves.

I'll be back again next year, and welcome you to to make sure and get a good room.

Painted Bunting from the Texas Hill Country Photo Safari -- Photo by participant Bill Ferry

   


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Product Updates:

Remember that our newsletter's costs are partially subsidized by money we get from our affiliate relationship with B&H. So we encourage you to use and bookmark our links to or start your shopping session from one of the convenient search boxes on the home page of nikondigital.org. THANKS for your continued support!

Other News:

I was featured in PC Magazine's Connected Traveler section. You for my photographic projects

In a bit of a return to my high-tech journalism days, I've begun writing a bit for extremetech.com. Only a few of the articles are directly photo related, but if you enjoy keeping up with technology that may impact all of us eventually, you can . I covered both PMA (the photo trade show) and CES (the consumer electronics trade show) in mid-January in Las Vegas.

Stay tuned for an announcement of an event at B&H in Manhattan during early June. We're still working on specifics, but hopefully it will happen.

 

Remember: If you have a group and want a custom safari to any of the destinations we frequent, drop us a line at safaris [at] cardinalphoto.com!
 

Featured Articles from nikondigital.org

Think Tank Airport TakeOff: Finally a rolling photo backpack that works!

Like most nature photographers, I’ve used photo backpacks for most of my life. They’re great for getting around, working from vehicles, and fitting into small planes. But lugging them through airports or conference centers – especially when combined with other luggage – is hard work, and doesn’t get any easier with age. A roller bag that doubles as a backpack is the obvious solution, but there hasn’t been one that is compact enough to fit nicely in an overhead or on a vehicle seat, until now …

 

Using Iris Blur in Photoshop CS6 to direct attention

One of the niftiest new filters in Photoshop’s bag of tricks is the Iris Blur filter. It mimics the behavior of limited depth of field by blurring the image outside a customizable “iris” shape. As usual, Photoshop provides plenty of options for controlling the radius of the non-blurred area (both an inner “hot spot” and outer "total effect” area), the shape of the iris, and the amount of focusing you want within the iris. Unlike using a wide-open aperture on your camera to blur the background, Photoshop doesn’t “know” which objects are close or far, so you need to craft the shape of the iris yourself. Fortunately Photoshop also lets you add multiple different iris blurs to create effects that would not be possible with a camera…

 

From birds to blooms in the Texas Hill Country

Our Texas Hill Country photo workshop drew to a close today with a full day of photography. We started this morning in the excellent blinds at , with our co-hosts Larry and Sharron Jay making sure we not only had a great breakfast, but were well set up for the arrival of the sun and songbirds.

 

Fixing lens flare using Photoshop CS6’s Content-aware Patch tool

Lens flare can be a major problem when photographing wide-angle scenics, especially through large groves of trees. Sometimes the sun is close enough to the frame that it isn’t possible to completely block it out without changing the composition of the photograph. Removing it after the fact is difficult if not impossible with traditional photo editing tools. One common approach is to use the Patch tool in Photoshop. Fortunately for all of us, the new Photoshop CS6 Patch tool can be made content-aware, and does a remarkably solid job helping fix lens flare…

 

Some raptors are friendlier than others–”rehab” Harris Hawk

We took a break from songbird photography this morning during our workshop at for a great session with John Carter and some of the raptors he works with at . These are birds that are either imprinted on humans or for some other reason can never be released. He brings them to schools for educational programs – and out to let us photograph them from time to time. This Harris Hawk was getting some “flying time” while she was out, and decided that my camera made a great perch for her. Fortunately neither claws nor sharp beak took advantage of the camera, and the bird was polite enough not to soil it. It made for a fun moment, though!

 

David featured by PC Mag in "What do you carry?"

David has been featured by PC Magazine in their "Connected Traveler" section. You can read about his travel exploits, what he carries and why, as well as how he gets it all where he is going . If you'd like to join him on one of his trips, he has a pair of great ones to , and one to .

 

Learning to use Nikon Flashes: Book Review of Nikon’s CLS by Mike Hagen

Each generation of Nikon flash systems has become more powerful and flexible, but also more complex. Understanding how the latest version, dubbed Creative Lighting System (CLS) works, and how to make the most of it, can be a daunting task, especially since each Nikon flash unit has slightly different controls, and works in a slightly different way. Fortunately, Mike Hagen’s new book, The Nikon Creative Lighting System, provides an easy-to-read, soup-to-nuts, dissection of CLS and specific, detailed instructions on how to use it with just about every model of Nikon flash – both on and off camera.

 

Finishing a photo with Photoshop CS6’s Adaptive Wide Angle filter

While not one of the marquee new features of Photoshop CS6, the Adaptive Wide Angle filter can help with one of the trickiest post-processing situations – correcting the distortion caused by using a wide angle lens. At the same time it can help reshape the image to draw attention to the subject in an image, which can be tricky if the subject isn’t the closest object to the camera….

 


Harris Hawks are hard to find and harder to photograph, but we always get great
shots during our

 

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