My Photographs

I enjoy photographing my animals. It allows me to really focus (no pun intended) on them and notice things that I had not seen before. I also enjoy being able to share my animals with other people through photography. I have no training in photography and I don't know a thing about "f-stops",  "white balance", etc. I use a Nikon Coolpix 995 digital camera. I have no special filters or attachments....just the camera right out of the box. I do have an extra battery, extra memory cards, and a card reader. I usually take my photos in the morning and outdoors. I have never been able to get good indoor photos with this camera. I have not tried any special lighting set-ups for indoor photography. Maybe someday I will figure something out. For now, you get photos using natural lighting off the deck in the back of my house.

I dislike when I must decide whether to buy an animal based on one photo. Therefore, I take LOTS of photos. In fact, I take many more then you ever see. For every 10 photos I take, I probably use about 3-4. That is the beauty of digital.....I can preview and delete with no harm done. I try to photograph the animals using different backgrounds.....the grass in my backyard.....the wood of the deck....or the stained wood of the picnic table. I also will frequently include my arm, hand, and watch so you can see that the colors are true. I do frequently use the autobalancing tools available when working with digital photos. Otherwise, most of my photos would be hopelessly too dark, too bright, or out of color balance. The photo galleries that you see are not easy to make. It typically takes from 2-4 hours from start to finish. Here is my typical sequence:

1. Take animal outside and shoot photographs. Some animals are very calm and will stay still for the pictures. I love these. Others require a lot of time and patience just to get a few "keepers".
2. The photos have to be downloaded from the memory card to the hard drive of my computer.
3. I name the folder and and conduct a first preview of the photos. At this point, I will delete those which obviously don't make the cut.
4. I make several passes through the photos deciding which will be the best for the gallery. In many cases, I will have multiple shots of a similar pose/angle and I have to go back and forth in order to decide the winner.
5. Once I have chosen the "finalists", I will begin processing the photos. All of the photos will be resized because they are very large files directly from the camera and would not be suitable for publishing on the Web. I resize them such that the largest dimension is 450 pixels and they are saved in JPEG format under a compression rating of 60. Some photos will also require cropping, rotating, and/or autobalancing.
6. I add my watermark.
7. I set-up a web page for the animal's gallery and fill in the standard information at the top.
8. I insert all the photos into the web page. I go through an overall run of the photo gallery and will frequently delete a few more photos here.
9. I make a new link for the new photo gallery.
10. I double check everything.
11. The final step is to upload all the new files to the server so that everyone else can see them.