Nemesis Birds, White Balance, and my first Wikipedia Contribution
I haven’t been doing bird photography very long and already I have some nemesis birds: gorgeous birds that I just can’t manage to get a good shot of, either because they never come within range, or they do but the lighting is poor, they’re facing away from me, or they’d behind a bunch of branches. Finally yesterday I got a decent photo of an American Goldfinch at Marymoor Park:
And that photo only cost me 5 mosquito bites.
Meanwhile, when I was back processing a bunch of photos, it finally struck me that this photo’s white balance was off:
After a 2-click correction in Photoshop and a little color balancing...
I can’t believe even after doing photography for 3+ years I still miss silly things like that.
Meanwhile, when I was showing various bird photos to my co-workers, one said, “wow, those are really great…you should upload them to Wikipedia.” I checked out Wikipedia and what do you know…they have various entries on birds, including several that could be improved with better pictures. So, I made my first two contributions to Wikipedia:
* The primary picture on the the Purple Martin page
* One of the secondary pictures of a Barn Swallow (scroll down until you see the picture with the caption “H. r. erythrogaster in Washington State, USA”).
And that photo only cost me 5 mosquito bites.
Meanwhile, when I was back processing a bunch of photos, it finally struck me that this photo’s white balance was off:
After a 2-click correction in Photoshop and a little color balancing...
I can’t believe even after doing photography for 3+ years I still miss silly things like that.
Meanwhile, when I was showing various bird photos to my co-workers, one said, “wow, those are really great…you should upload them to Wikipedia.” I checked out Wikipedia and what do you know…they have various entries on birds, including several that could be improved with better pictures. So, I made my first two contributions to Wikipedia:
* The primary picture on the the Purple Martin page
* One of the secondary pictures of a Barn Swallow (scroll down until you see the picture with the caption “H. r. erythrogaster in Washington State, USA”).
Interesting - I hadn't considered Wikipedia as the next generation photo gallery. Perhaps our next photo outing theme should be "primary Wikipedia photos," where we each try for the top photo on some topic.
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Thanks for the comment on the Barn Swallow photo! I was very happy with how that turned out.
I hadn't considered Wikipedia either until a co-worker mentioned it. And then it occurred to me that publishing photos there might end up being my longest-living photos. Plus, it's kind of cool to consider contributing to the world's encyclopedia. I also felt semi-obligated given how much I use wikipedia
I like your photo outing idea, but there are so many choices! Flowers? Places? Birds? Insects? Where do we start?
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