Lloyd Spitalnik Photography

I’ve been very busy over the last 2 weeks and haven’t been able to devote time to the blog. My computer went down after the power supply died, so had to wait for the new one to arrive and install it. After that, with a little detective work on my part, I had to replace the cable that runs from the computer to the monitor. Needless to say, I lost several days. I learned that, at least for me, it’s near impossible to process images on a laptop. What normally takes 5-7 minute was taking over 10. That’s unacceptable! Finally something good, my new Canon EOS ID Mark IV arrived. What a camera!

This is supposed to be about photo tips so here goes. This one came as a special request from a good friend. If you have a question, send it to me and I’ll see if I can help.

The question: “I started in Lightroom and straightened my image or so I thought. When I moved my workflow to Photoshop I realized I needed to straighten the horizon a little more. What’s the easiest way to do it?”

Here’s the answer: Go to the eyedropper tool and find the ruler tool beneath it by  right clicking (Photoshop CS4. As I recall, earlier version might have the ruler tool in another place). This is with a 2 button mouse. For you Mac users I’m not quite sure how to do it but I’m sure you do . With the ruler tool open, draw a line along the horizon line or beneath a duck on the water as another example. Next go to Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary and click OK. This will straighten you photo but you’ll have to crop away the white areas that are created. Of course this all could be avoided if you get it the way you want it on the original crop. In both Lightroom and Camera Raw, it’s a very simple task. After you make your crop move the cursor outside the cropped area and you’ll see a curved arrow replacing your normal cursor. Just move it up or down and your image will begin to rotate. Lightroom even brings up a grid so you can see straight lines to guide you.

This one came up today. I’m currently organizing a program that has to be done by Wednesday the 27th. On that date I’m giving a slide show presentation to the Sierra Club’s Photo Club.  It will be held at the St. Paul the Apostle • 405 West 59th St. • 2nd floor • New York, NY (1½ blocks west of Columbus Circle, between 9th and 10th Avenues) Suggested donation $5.00. Doors open at 6pm, the show begins at 6:30. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s proceed with the tip.

I had 75 large format tif files in a folder that needed to be converted to 1000 x 667 jpegs. Of course it could have been done one by one, but talk about tedious. If you ever run into this situation or one like it, here’s what to do. Create a new folder on your desktop or a location of your choice and move all the photos into it. Now, create another folder on your desktop and name it something like “photos small” or whatever you want. Open Photoshop and go to File > Scripts > Image Processor. In the first box choose the folder where the images are. In the second box choose the folder you created (photos small) and in the third box choose the file type you want, in my case JPEG, the quality 5 -8 is good for email or the web. Check “size to fit” and put your largest dimensions into the boxes.  For the web or email check “convert to sRGB. Click on the RUN button and watch the magic begin. This is an extremely useful feature of Photoshop and really saves a lot of time.

This tip is easy to do but somewhat difficult to explain. For you seasoned veterans, nothing earth shattering here, but a good tip nevertheless. Let’s talk about the “Fade” command. It is used when there is no layer involved and you want to reduce the opacity or use a blend mode. Let’s say you do a “Shadows/Highlights” adjustment found under Image > Adjustments. A sometimes very useful adjustment but once it’s done, it’s done. Well not so fast. Immediately after doing it press on a PC Control/Shift/F or on a Mac Command/Shift/F and the fade control will appear. Adjust the opacity and or blend mode here. Remember, this is a one shot deal. If you make any other adjustment prior to the fade it will be unavailable. I hope this makes sense because I know I use it all the time and it really improves the image. If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them. These are the types of things I can teach you in my private lesson sessions. Top image has a shadow/highlight adjustment. Bottom photo is exactly the same but with a fade of 65%. The effect is subtle but makes the subject look more natural. Click on each image for a better view.

The month of December has been one of the slowest for me that I can remember. On the first I went down to Cape May with David Speiser where we met up with Kevin Karslon. We were all there to shoot the “famous Cape May Ivory Gull”. Another  full week passed and I went out to see Artie Morris’ talk at the NWPLI in Bayshore. Arrived early and had the pleasure of photographing Redheads both male and female. That’s it folks. Not another day with the camera out. Not happy about that at all. It’s like a junkie going through withdrawal. Last Thursday I came down with a very violent case of food poisoning or maybe a stomach virus. Either way it lasted close to a week. Please no sympathy cards .

Starting next week I’m going to start something new. It’s going to be called “My tip of the week”. Nothing earth shattering but little tricks that might save you some time, give some insight or just something to remind you. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Here are some of the images I referenced above. Let me know what you think of the images or the idea of having a tip of the week. I look forward to your feedback.

If anybody’s wondering, I’ve been very busy this past month and this is the first chance to sit down and post something. Late October I did a slide show presentation on Shorebirds for the Queens County Bird Club. On the 24th of November I’ll be doing another one for North Shore Audubon Society. This one will combine shorebirds and wading birds. Preparation for these shows is quite time consuming.
I’ve given several private classes on Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. If you’re interested, please get in touch with me. You’ll find my contact info above.
Of course, I’ve been in the field photographing what I can but there haven’t been that many opportunities. Since my last post I’ve only shot six days. Fortunately, on those days, I was able to get some decent stuff. Hammonasset State Park in Connecticut had a very cooperative Hudsonian Godwit that at times was so close you’d have to back up. Jones Beach was a different story. Sandy and I spent several hours there and remarked at how unbelievably slow it was. Suddenly there was an American Kestrel perched and an hour later a Merlin sitting, eating a Dark-eyed Junco. That made the day. On another day David Speiser and I went looking for sparrows and instead wound up at the beach. It was high tide and the water breached the shore and created tide pools. Shorebirds flocked to the pools and besides for the usual Dunlin, Sanderling and Black-bellied Plover, we were treated to close to 200 Red Knot. It’s always great see this endangered species but to see this many at one time was exciting. A few days later we went back to the beach but there weren’t any tide pools. Still, there were many shorebirds and while scanning through one of the flocks I found a Purple Sandpiper. In my 25 years of birding I’ve never seen one on the beach. I’ve only seen them on jetties. The moral to this story is don’t take things for granted. You never know what you’ll see or photograph just by looking.

Here are some of the flight shots mentioned in the previous post. Let me know what you think.

I’ve always said that Cape May is either feast or famine. I’ve been there in both conditions many times. A good friend went there the beginning of last week (Oct. 4th-6th) and called to tell me what a tough time he was having. This was strictly from a photographer’s point of view. He mentioned there were birds coming through but too high to shoot. That’s the famine.

I received a call from Kevin Karlson telling me it was time to come down. This was Wednesday the 7th. If you remember, the winds were 40 MPH gusting to 60. While driving down the Garden State Parkway I had to hold onto to the steering wheel pretty tightly the whole 130 miles. Arriving at 4PM, I met up with Kevin and a few other friends and we tried to take some shots of Merlin. Those birds are so fast to begin with imagine when they have a 40 MPH tailwind. Needless to say, I came away with nothing. Fortunately I really went down for Thursday’s possibilities and wasn’t disappointed.

At 6:30am I met up with a group of friends who just happen to be some of the finest photographers around. Besides Kevin, some of the others were Scott Elowitz, Jim Zipp and Jim Neiger to name a few. As soon as we got into our camouflage drapes the birds started coming in. Early in the morning is the time to shoot perched birds. There were a few times when we had 3 Cooper’s Hawks sitting right in front of us. We shot until 9 and then it was time for flight shooting. We didn’t stop until 6PM and all had a great time. Other than Cooper’s Hawk, we also were able to shoot Sharp-shinned Hawk, Broad-winged Hawk and Northern Harrier. Strangely, there were very few Merlin which were expected in the late afternoon, but all in all I’d say we had our feast.

In my last post I used the word “pathetic” to describe the current songbird migration going on in the NYC area. I’m sure there are a lot of birders out there who would disagree with that assessment. However, I’ve spoken to a lot of experienced, long time birders and we all agree that this might be the worst we’ve seen it in many, many years. Sure, you can go out, and if you work really hard, you can probably fill your day list with a decent amount of species. The problem is, with few exceptions, most species are seen in ones and twos. Back to the title of this post, from a photographer’s view, not being concerned with birds high in the treetops, the migration has been almost non-existent. Considering we’re into October, I have very few images to show for my time in the field. What’s most discouraging is not the lack of photos, but the severe decline in numbers of individual birds. Hopefully the birds have found other migration paths. Here are a few photos I’ve been able to get. I hope you enjoy them.

I don’t know about you but I’ve found the Fall songbird migration to be pretty pathetic. Carrying 25 lbs. of camera equipment requires motivation and I just haven’t had any. Fortunately, there are insects to photograph and the equipment goes down to about 6 lbs. Using a Canon 50D camera, Canon’s excellent 100mm f/2.8  macro lens and a Canon 580EX II external flash, you can have a lot of fun walking around Shakespeare Garden in Central Park and find lots to shoot. There are butterflies, wasps, bees, caterpillars, katydids and lots of flies. Here are a bunch of fly photos that look nothing like common house flies. It’s hard to believe how interesting and beautiful they are. Let me know what you think.

I’ve always prided myself on being a reasonably good field birder. Other than making a real quick call only to realize a second later that I was wrong, it’s been a long time that I’ve mistaken one bird for another. Yesterday was my day. Standing at the “Upper Lobe” in Central Park trying to shoot Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, a vireo popped up on a branch about 40 – 50 feet away. Took a look, fired a few shots and declared it was a Warbling Vireo. Even showed my friend in the back of the camera. Now I’m shooting with a Canon EOS  Mark II which is five years old and the screen on the back is postage sized compared to today’s cameras. I was glad to get the Warbling and didn’t think much of it. Went back to TRYING to shoot hummingbirds. It was very overcast yesterday and even with  the help of the flash those birds were too fast for me. Tomorrow’s another day and hopefully they’ll still be around and I’ll be more on my game . Things were so bad yesterday that I only pressed the shutter 21 times. For those who know me, 21 squeezes of the trigger would normally take a minute or two. This 21 was over the course of 2 hours. Needless to say there just weren’t many birds. Late last evening I figured I might as well look at what I had taken, thinking they’d all be throwaways. They were save one. Even this one would have been deleted if it weren’t for the fact that it’s the first image I’ve taken of the species. Here is an image of a Warbling Vireo that turned into a Philadelphia Vireo.