Our Anhinga Published in the November, 2022 issue of Ranger Rick, Jr.

 

 

Photos of Anhinga birds stretching their wings to dry are not all that unusual and we've photographed them many times in the Florida Everglades.

This particular photo has a slightly different look than the Everglades. It was taken on the bank of the Silver River northeast of Ocala, FL with a Canon 70-200mm lens and appears as the back cover fold out in the current November, 2022 issue of National Wildlife Federation's Ranger Rick Jr. Magazine.

Pulling Detail Out Of Underexposed Areas

 

While editing our photos from a recent trip to St. Augustine, Florida I came upon the top photo of the historic City Gate of St. Augustine.  We had both successfully photographed the entrance to the City Gate from the other side in soft early morning light with no people present.  I walked through the gate, turned around and saw this incredible sky above the now silhouetted gate.  Realizing that if I photographed the gate on auto exposure the sky would be over exposed and blown out. So I switched to manual exposure and exposed for the sky leaving the gate underexposed (top photo). Now I was able to pull out the detail of the underexposed gate in Camera RAW while keeping that beautiful sky (bottom photo). Remember that it's nearly impossible, even when working a RAW file, to bring back detail from an overexposed area.

Photo was taken with a 24 megapixel Canon, exposure was f8, 1/100 sec, ISO 100

Anticipation Pays Off

 We always arrive at a zoo, or in this case a Wildlife State Park, a few minutes before opening to ensure we are the first to encounter the animals.  In this case we knew there were a pair of endangered Whooping Cranes in a captive breeding program.  I already had my camera setup with the optimum focal length lens, a Canon 70-200mm, and a Canon speedlight with a diffuser attached. This beautiful bird still had it's head tucked in under its wing. Photo is being published in the current issue of Range Magazine.