"Busted!" Or "Friday Fun With Fotoshop!"

Benny B. "The Fish Eater" Heron has finally been busted! (click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X-H1; 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens @ 400mm + the 1.4X tele-converter; 1/1000th sec. @ f/8; ISO 400

The other day I was out and about just wandering with my camera.  It has been unusually hot and humid (mid-90s F (35 C) this week but I needed to get out and practice my photographic skills.  My first stop was at one of my favorite haunts, Poquoson Virginia, also known as Bull Island, just to see what I could find.

There is a parking lot (car park) next to the water where the crabbers, oysterman and fisherman unload their catch for the day.  A great blue heron was standing on the edge of the of the pavement so a full length photo of the bird was not going to work.  But I grabbed my Fujifilm X-H1, attached the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens + the 1.4X tele-converter, rolled down the window and made some images of the heron.  I wanted to a) practice handholding that 840mm full frame field of view focal length to improve my skills in holding the combination as steady as I could and b), work on achieving sharp focus at close distances with relatively wide apertures while hand holding the camera.

It was especially challenging to achieve sharp "eye" focus in the image of the heron on the left in the above composite.  It looked right at me which made the eye a pretty small target, but I reduced the size of the focus spot in the X-H1's EVF and focused right on the eye.  The profile image is also focused on the eye.  

As an aside, I can't say enough about how well the combination of the in-body-image-stabilization (IBIS) of the X-H1 coupled with the image stabilization (IS) in the lens worked together.  That combination worked so well that all of my images with that camera/lens/tele-converter combination were sharply focused that day.  Now, if I am in a position that I have to hand hold the long lens for static subjects, I will normally attach the X-H1 to it rather than the X-T3.  Because of the IS I think it is a better combination for static subjects.  For birds in flight or for subject tracking, the X-T3 is still my go-to body.

Later in the day when I returned home and looked at my images, I was pleased that the camera and I, as a team, was able to critically focus in all of the images I made.  However, thinking about the images I made, which are relatively useless for anything except illustration, I thought two composited together would make a good "mugshot."  I smiled and set out to "play" with them in Photoshop to see what I could create.  A whimsical exercise was now the order of the day!

Below are the two original images from which I made the above composite.  As I said, the bird was in the parking lot and the blue is the plain sky behind it.  If you know Great Blue Herons, they don't let you get close to them.  This is as close as I could get with the 840mm equivalent combination.

Just like you have to practice anything in which you want to improve your skills, I thought making this composite would be a good opportunity to practice and improve my editing skills, both in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.  

I composited the two images above, found an image of a "mugshot" type sign board (the old fashioned kind in which you push in plastic letters) then added the text in a font that is similar to that you find on real mugshots.  I then changed the blue background to gray.  Most mugshots have a neutral gray background so as to make them as generic as possible.  Often times mugshots from different jurisdictions are used to conduct a "photo line-up" and ideally you want all the mugshots to be as similar in nature as possible to try to remove any bias that is possible by one image sticking out amonst others.  Neutral gray is kind of standard or at least it was when I was working.

I'm pleased with "The Fish Eater" mugshot.  It was fun and I gained some additional skills in handholding long focal length lenses as well as tweaking my editing skills.

Lesson Learned:  Practice, practice practice at every opportunity.

(click to enlarge)

UPDATE:  I forgot to include as to why this scofflaw was arrested.  I watched it land on the edge of the pavement, look around, then slowly walk over to the back of the truck pictured here.  The bird's intent was to steal fish from the truck but it was thwarted by the tailgate being closed.  It couldn't get to the fish so, after some time, it wandered away.  Still.  Attempted larceny is the charge!








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Dennis A. Mook 

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