The elusive wood duck

[Hatchdog]

Wow, you went from the good to the bad and ugly in that series of pics.

Never seen a gator but would like to do so someday.

[BrokenolMarine]

One of our last trips to visit my folks in Fl before the move to OK, it was like the gators had taken over. We stayed in Destin and there were gators in the ditch on the outskirts of town. There were Gator Crossing signs, similar to Deer Crossing signs... where the roads would run between bodies of water. I made a joking comment to a shopkeeper and he said, "Oh, no, the signs are serious. We call them speedbumps here."

They have given new meaning to the "Water Hazard" on the golf courses.

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[clovishound]

Managed to get a few shots of some wood ducks at the Audubon Swamp this morning. Lighting was terrible and birds were too far away. As usual.

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[Hatchdog]

The Woodies look great Clovis. I think the green surface on the water really helps highlight the colors on the ducks.

[clovishound]

Unfortunately, it's some pretty harsh lighting. Full sun, late morning. The only thing worse would have been directly overhead.

Still, better to get the shot under less than ideal conditions, than to go home empty handed.

I did get something today to help get more usable shots. I got the Topaz Labs bundle. It has software that will clean up noisy images taken in lower light. It also can sharpen slightly out of focus images. What I have seen so far is that sometimes it doesn't work well with an image, and sometimes it does amazing things.

This is one I shot last week that was underexposed and high ISO. It was very noisy, and the clouds looked terrible. I ran it through Denoise and it cleaned it up rather well. The cypress branches are rather busy, but I like the shape and details in the spread wings, and the counterpoint with the mate in the nest.

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I used the Gigapixel program that came with it to clean up the picture of my grandfather. It does have a few unusual artifacts, but it does some amazing things with a very poor image.

The original:

grandpa2.jpg

And here's the same image after processing:
Keep in mind it also doubled the size of the image. I probably should have brought it down to the same size for a direct comparison, but didn't feel like taking the trouble.

grandpa2-gigapixel-very_compressed-scale-2_00x.jpg

[Hatchdog]

^^^^^^^

Wow, that’s amazing. The difference in the siding above the logs in the cabin are wonderful as is the detail in his gunbelt.

[BrokenolMarine]

I used to get some good pictures of the wildlife when kayaking. Great thing about kayak fishing, is they are so quiet ... If the fish aren't biting, you drift along and get great pictures.

I really like the colors and reflections in the turtle picture.

turtles sample.jpg

This Green Heron pic would make a great puzzle.

Briery Green Heron comp.jpg

These guys waiting for a bus? (All turtles, back of the line!)

waiting for the bus comp.jpg

I often got lucky, and the subject of the pics never even noticed until after the picture was taken.

[clovishound]

Looks like you've got your ducks in a row!

I played around this morning with the new software. It's not the magic they make it seem like in the advertising, at least with pictures taken with a decent camera and lens, that need some extra sharpening or noise reduction. It does a better job of noise reduction than sharpening in my limited experience so far. A few pictures have greatly improved with it, and some just a little. I do need to learn more about playing around with a few of the options and sliders. It doesn't look too complicated, and their aren't that many options.

I took another wood duck picture from Sat and ran it through the different software programs. This was the result. Not an artistic image, but not too bad considering the amount of cropping and the lighting.

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And just for giggles and grins here's an Ibis from the same trip. It was full sun, but was able to get close enough to preserve good resolution.

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[clovishound]

And a couple more I salvaged with Gigapixel.

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[BrokenolMarine]

Fantastic Pictures, the colors are so vibrant.

I used to love our favorite pond in VA covered in that duckweed. The bass would get ANGRY when we pulled Ribbet Frogs across the topwater and explode violently out of the water onto them. Big Flies with the fly rod like pond mice or hoppers would have the same effect. I miss it.