A Happy Honor

I was happily surprised to be contacted by the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA) informing me that this black-and-white image of puffins is being showcased on their website this week. Always an honor to have an image selected! Here is the link to their site
http://www.nanpa.org
It is one of several images on the NANPA Home Page, which will cycle through automatically.

You may remember seeing this image on the Blog earlier this year. It was shot on a small island in the Cook Inlet off the coast of Alaska near Lake Clark National Park. I was lucky that these Horned Puffins briefly posed themselves in the perfect position to create a beautiful line formed by their white and black feathers.

The original color image had grass in the background which I found distracting. So I replaced the background with a light gray background created in Photoshop. And while the bills were quite colorful, I chose to create this monochromatic version to better showcase the texture and contrast of the entire image.

When making extensive changes like this, you must disclose that when entering any nature and wildlife competition. Generally I do not significantly change an image from its original appearance, but sometimes it is good to exercise your creative muscles and go for something unusual or unexpected.

TECH SPECS
1/1250 sec. at f/8, ISO 800. Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II lens set at 400mm on Canon 7D Mark II body. Handheld.

TODAY'S QUOTE: "Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretative."  -- Elliott Erwitt

FREE Live Webinar for Camera Clubs

FREE Live Webinar - Lightroom Unleashed

Because we are still staying at home to remain safe from the coronavirus, I am offering a FREE live Webinar to camera clubs that would like to provide continuing learning opportunities to members. 

My very popular "Lightroom Unleashed" Webinar is an information-packed opportunity to learn how to quickly and easily take your images from Sad to Spectacular. Above you can see the RAW Before and After images, showing post-processing in Lightroom. All changes were done totally in Lightroom. No other software was used. 

The webinar covers many of my secrets for getting great results quickly. You will see a variety of Before and After images, and how the transitions were done. 

You will learn:

- how to use Lightroom most effectively to take your images from blah to boffo,

- a simple, fast, and foolproof Lightroom workflow,

- which tools and sliders are best to use, and how to use them,

- which tools and sliders to AVOID and why,

- why the histogram in Lightroom is so important,

- why the Gradient tool is a better choice than the Vignette tool,

- and more!

If your club is interested in making this Webinar available to members, please email me at awakethelightphoto@icloud.com as soon as possible. We can schedule the Webinar on a day and time that is best for your club. Demand has been high for this opportunity. I hope you can join me online!

TECH SPECS

1/640 sec. at f/8, ISO 1600. Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II lens with Canon 1.4x III extender for an effective focal length of 560mm, on Canon 7D Mark II body. Handheld. 

TODAY'S QUOTE: "What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create."  -- Buddha