wildlife – Lee Orchard Photography

Photoshop – Blurring Background

By Lee | November 25, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

I offer a range of tutoring options for individuals and these are always tailored to your needs.

In this example, I covered background blurring. This lovely photo of a Jackdaw, was sitting on a perch that was one a couple of feet from the hedge. It gave a nice green background, but I wasn’t happy with the DOF in the photo. Ideally, the perch should have been further from the hedge, but thesis not always possible.

Like many photographers, I prefer to do it in camera if possible, but these days, many many photos are edited, so it’s good to know how to do some of these things.

In Photoshop, I have cutout the subject from the background and used Content-Aware Fill to fill the space, then used field blur to add extra blur to the background.

I think the result is better than the original but has kept a natural look in the photo.

I now offer remote tutoring for anyone interested in learning Lightroom & Photoshop, this is easier than having to deal with Covid issues and also doesn’t limit the distance of the learner. If you are a Mac user, no extra software is needed either!

Please use the link below to find out more.

Tutoring

Butterfly Quest

By Lee | June 25, 2014 | Comments 0 Comment

After my recent successes with the butterflies, although these were still a bit limiting,

I thought I’d try and get to the park earlier in the morning to see if I could photograph them when it was cooler and they were less active. A good idea in theory, but in practice it didn’t really work, the butterflies were hidden in at the bottom of the tall grasses and fell up as you walked, then hid again at the bottom of the grasses. Also, interestingly there were no Common Blue butterflies around.

I found this Meadow Brown on the pathway in front of me and it stayed long enough to a nice photo, so all was not wasted.

When I went again this morning, I had the same problem again, but was lucky enough to get a few photos of a kestrel hunting!

View more insect images here

Another BWC photo

By Lee | May 8, 2014 | Comments 0 Comment

Here’s another photo from the British Wildlife Centre.

Spring has Arrived

By Lee | March 10, 2014 | Comments 0 Comment

So finally the rain has stopped and Spring seems to have arrived. As it looked like the whole weekend was going to be nice, we actually managed to plan what we wanted to do and headed off to the British Wildlife Centre.

This was a good opportunity to test the camera out on wildlife. I haven’t taken any wildlife photos in a long time, so it was a bit of a challenge trying to get the shots I wanted.

The first problem was that not many of the animals were playing ball and secondly the lighting was also quite harsh, this was a real problem during the Owl flying session.

So what did I manage to get?

I got a nice side on photo of the Scottish Wildcat

I have also managed to improve on my Harvest Mouse photo, which I was really pleased with.

As well as getting some nice lighting with the Badgers, although positioning of me and the Badgers proves a bit tricky!

As I said above, the lighting for the Owl display, was either nice sunshine or looking directly into the sun! As I hadn’t been to this one before it was hit and miss as to where to sit and the Owl were also flying behind a big oak tree that was in the middle of the arena. So I really struggled and didn’t get much. I got a lovely shot of the Long Eared Owl on a tree log an interesting highly back lit shot of the Barn Owl and just about this shot of the Tawny in flight.

One of the most interesting photos was actually taken in the car park of these Herons.

I also managed to get a nice photo of a Marsh frog, an Otter as sleep and a Squirrel chewing on someones jumper. I would have like to get more, especially with the flying, but I guess it was the best I could have hoped for really.

So it was a lovely day, but a little frustrating from a photography point of view.

I did meet a young lady how was taking a photography course and asked a few questions, so it was good to be able to help her out and I hope she got some shot that she was pleased with.