The Process Of Shooting and Editing This Photo
American white ibis (Eudocimus albus)
Equipment: Nikon Z9, Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR
Settings: Aperture of f/5.6, Shutter speed of 1/2000th of a second, ISO 560
I want to walk you through the entire process of how this final image was created. You often hear workshop leaders say things like, “I watched for the right background,” “Pay attention to the highlights,” “Make sure you are using a fast enough shutter speed,” and “Use the right aperture to blur your backgrounds,” or even, “I will make those final adjustments in post”… but what does all that really mean? What are the actual thought processes or the steps behind those suggestions?
This post is one of a series of posts that I am going to start to create to help you learn how to think like a professional photographer. I want to help you create a workflow in your mind to help put you in the right position, then a post-processing work flow.
Let's start with the situation and the species itself
I was in Costa Rica on a holiday with my wife and friend. The place we were staying at was right on the beach. Every morning, we would walk at sunrise, armed with cameras. The goal was to get morning exercise and to take some photos of the birds in the estuary and the ocean's shores.
I noticed every morning, the White ibis would be feeding along the shores. Once they were finished, they would fly into the estuary area at around 9 am. I also noticed an ebb and flow to their activity. As we got closer, they would walk and fly away from us, giving us a wide birth before we passed them. Once we passed them, they would go back to their regular activity in the shallow water.
There are a few learning moments from just that observation for a photographer.
They were interrupted by people. If I wanted a photo of them doing what they are naturally doing, I needed to acclimate them to my presence to get as close as possible.
I paid attention to the sunlight. Where was I going to photograph them to take advantage of the lighting situation? Based on the situation, would I need to adjust for back light, side light, or front lighting? - More on the camera adjustments are needed for that a little later.
What time of day should I be there to get the photos that I wanted? Based on the activity that I noticed, it would have to be in the morning. I rarely saw them on the shores later in the day.
Photos of the Ibis Habits that I was seeing to give you some perspective
I wanted a flight photo. Capturing them when they first took off would have me dealing with cluttered backgrounds created by the waves
I noticed they would stick in groups and fly away from us as we walked up to them. This would create depth of field issues to get them all in focus.
If I waited too long to catch them in flight with buidings in the background.
Photographing them at real early light, while preferable, was not going to get me the flight shot I wanted. They were too busy feeding.
Getting them on the ground with reflections was going to take too much time in post processing to eliminate the foreground distractions.
A flight shot when they moved positions also had me battling backgrounds.
This was the image I decided to use to create my final image. It was about 5 seconds after it took to flight, before it was flying in front of the homes, and offered me a background I could work with.
Why This Photo? What Settings Did I Use? What Situational Decisions Did I make To put Myself in the Position To Capture THis?
Why This Photo?
I like wing positions when you can see both the front and the back of the wings while still seeing a clear far and neck. The wing position could have been up or down; that all boils down to your personal preference. I have taken both kinds of wing positions. I don't like a horizontal wing position where you cannot see the feather details.
I also settled on this image because of the lack of background clutter. I did not want to deal with homes or crashing waves. I liked the softness of the immediate background behind the bird... and I would soften that more in post-processing. This leads me to the comment photographers make about "fixing that in post-processing." This is what they mean. They took an image they took in their camera, then highlight it so they can see it later in their software. They know the limitations of their software and understand what what they could do to enhance an image they took out in the field.
What Settings Did I Use?
I was using my Nikon Z9 and my 500PF lens. I love this combination. The Z9 eye detect mode is excellent (my keeper ratio sure went up because of that setting), and the 500 prime lens has a fast autofocus coupled with a nice soft effect in the backgrounds.
I used an aperture of F/5.6. I have used this lens enough to know what distance I need to be away from wildlife at any given aperture setting to keep the animal(s) in focus. If I was closer in this situation I would have used F/9, maybe even F/11. But that would have created more work in Lightroom because the backgrounds would be more in focus than I would like.
Remember when I mentioned above that people will say, “Watch for the highlight clipping?” This can be controlled by your settings while taking photos. Watch your histograms when taking photos. You want to adjust the brightness of your photos by making sure you are metering for the brightest part of the image. This is very important when photographing a white bird in direct lighting. If you do see your histogram pushing past the right side of the histogram, there are a couple of things you can do. Lower your ISO, adjust your exposure compensation to the plus side by a 1/2 or full stop, or increase your shutter speed. It’s a balancing act, and every situation is different. In this instance, I did not have to do anything. If I was to make an adjustment in this situation, I would have lowered my ISO by taking it off AUTO and adjusting it down to 400 or 320…
I used a shutter speed of 1/2000th of a second. Based on my experience photographing larger birds, I know 1/1600th of a second or lower tends to create motion blur in the wings. Anything above 1/2000th to 1/2500th of a second was overkill. A higher shutter speed would also introduce more noise than the ISO560 I saw in my camera.
Practice close to home with birds in your area before you travel. Adjust shutter speeds while you are practicing. That way you will know what the right shutter speed is when you are on vacation photographing that bird you really want to get right.
As I mentioned, my ISO was set to auto. With the changing brightness of the bird against the beach and then the trees, auto ISO would just be the smart decision. Today, cameras and software can handle ISO that we all previously thought were not manageable. Heck, when I was in the cloud forest earlier in this trip I was taking photos at ISO9000 and above that were completely saved by using Denoise. My point here is, do not be afraid of higher ISO anymore. Software will come to your rescue.
What Decisions Did I Make To Create This Photo?
Based on my experience with the camera and lens, I knew what distance to be away from the birds to use that aperture. And do you remember back when I started this post where I mentioned the birds tried to avoid us when we walked down the beach? Well, I made the conscious decision to wander down the beach and give them a wide birth so they were not scared of me. I went and sat in the sand and watched them. I let them acclimate to my presence. I placed the sun behind me and made sure that I was sitting in a spot where the birds would fly to my right to go from the beach to the estuary around the 9 am time I noticed they were flying on previous days.
I employed patience, waited, and took lots of photos that I didn't like... finally, an Ibis took the right flight path where the sun, bird, and I were all positioned properly.
Original Image
Before Noise Reduction and Content-Aware Fill applied
Final Image
Editing Steps I Made To This Image
My First step is to crop – The Nikon Z9 has a lot of megapixels to work with. And with the limitations of reach of the 500 prime I was using, I knew I had lots of megapixels to work with when cropping the photo. The original RAW file was 8256x5504 pixels. The final image came out to 4227x2784 pixels. It is still large enough to print and show you online.
Adjusting the Background – I use Lightroom. The new tools in Lightroom allow me to easily select the background. Just make sure when you are making this selection that the software is not selecting any of the subjects. You can easily fix this by using the Brush tool to add to the selection or eliminate any of the software suggestions. Regardless of the software you use, just make sure you are only selecting the background. In this image, I performed a couple of tasks. (1) I took away details by lowering the clarity and texture, (2) I lightened the background, (3) I raised the shadows and lowered the contrast to achieve a smooth background that did not have any distracting elements.
Adjustments to the Subject – I then selected just the subject. I wanted to lower the highlights of the white feathers to make sure I did not blow out any whites. I then lightened the shadows to bring out the detail in the back wing and the feet. I wanted you to see those details. I then increased the saturation of the beak and faced just enough to make the colours pop. My final adjustment on the subject was just on the eye. I lightened the eye just a bit to allow you to see the eye more clearly.
Noise Reduction and Sharpening – I wait to do this until after all my global edits and micro-adjustments are completed. I perform noise reduction and sharpening in Lightroom. You may export your image into another software. First, I perform noise reduction, then I will sharpen only the bird to bring back any details of noise reduction softened.
Content-Aware Fill – I do this last because doing this before I use Lightroom Denoise could have a negative effect on the area I want to change. In this case, I used content-aware fill to eliminate the darker water on the bottom right of the image.
Keywording – This is one thing a lot of people overlook. It is such a powerful tool to allow you to look up your images long after you take them. In the case of this image, I used the following keywords, “Akari photo tours, Bird, Playa Flamingo, Costa Rica, Central America, Kevin Pepper, Kevin Pepper Photography, American White Ibis, bird in flight, life list of birds, beach, white bird.”
I can now look up each of these keywords in Lightroom. Lightroom will show me every photo in my Master Catalog that has any of these keywords applied.
Final Thoughts
I hope this post helped you understand what went into taking this image. I could go deep into the weeds in editing the image. But there are so many other posts out there that focus on editing. You all use so many different software to post-process your images. My suggestion is to get to know them better; it will have a positive impact on your images.
If you have never been to a photo workshop, these are the kinds of steps that a workshop leader will walk you through when out in the field, and then again back in the classroom for post-processing sessions. We, as workshop leaders, have been to these destinations enough that we don’t need to be taking photos; we are there by your side telling you what to look for, and informing you of the settings to use in any given situation because we have been there, we have the experience, and we want you to take the best photos you can take. When back in the classroom, we will then take those photos you took and show you how to create better photos in post-processing.
The only reasons we are taking photos while on a workshop are (1) to be taking photos in the same situation as you so we can show you what’s possible, and (2) to make sure we know what settings to relay to you.
If you have been to a photo workshop and you are not taking advantage of classroom editing sessions, this post shows you the kind of help you would be getting if you are not taking advantage of the editing sessions.
If you want to see the workshops I am leading for Akari Photo Tours, check out the lineup of tours that we offer. We would be happy to talk about any tour that may be of interest to you. Click on the button below, and we hope to see you on a tour soon.