American Bald Eagle SNOWY PORTRAIT (Hailiaeetus leucocephalus, Pygarge a tete blanche, BAEA) Kachemak Bay (near Homer), Alaska ©Christopher Dodds All Rights Reserved. Sony Alpha a9 Mirrorless camera & Sony FE100-400mm F4.5-5.6 G Master OSS Lens @ 164mm Full Frame image. ISO 4,000 f/5.6 @ 1/5,000s Manual mode.

Another Eagle :)

Here's yet another Eagle from my recent Eagles Galore workshop in Alaska; it's a full frame portrait from the Sony a9 mirrorless camera in silent mode at 164mm.

Sony a9 Fastest way to cull images

After returning from Alaska, and realizing that my trusted PhotoMechanic software was getting sluggish and buggy, I decided to try every software that I could find to quickly sort out which images I will keep or throw away. The process can be overwhelming after a day of action photography with the Sony a9 @ 20FPS!

I discovered www.FastRawViewer.com, and love how easy it is to customize and how fast it is to generate previews from the RAW files. It is inexpensive and offers great value. Like many things today, there are almost too many ways to configure and set-up the software, so I kept looking while continuing to learn Fast Raw Viewer.

I use Adobe Bridge (which comes with Creative Cloud Photoshop subscriptions) to ensure a properly colour calibrated output for my slide shows and accidentally realized that Adobe Bridge churns through the Sony a9 images blazingly fast.

So, my new culling workflow is:

When I return from a long day in the field, I copy the contents of my memory card to a folder on my laptop's hard drive, then I open that folder in Adobe Bridge. Adobe Bridge immediately generates a thumbnail of all of the images. I start at the beginning, and view the full screen preview of the first image; {Command & Delete} to delete, or {Command & 6) to tag as a "Select". I don't go to bed until I have narrowed down the folder of thousands of images to the few "Selects" that I will keep.

Northern Gannet THE BOUQUET (Morus Bassanus, Fou de Bassan, NOGA) Parc national de l'Île-Bonaventure-et-du-Rocher-Percé, Bonaventure Island, Quebec Image Copyright ©Christopher Dodds www.chrisdoddsphoto.com All Rights Reserved. Canon EOS 1DX Mark II, 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS II USM @400mm. ISO 1600, f/8 @ 1/3,200s Manual. Full Frame. PURCHASE A PRINT or LICENSE IMAGE FOR PUBLICATION HERE.

Here's another Gannet from the first day of my Gannets Galore workshop. This one in heavy fog. Foggy images lack contrast, and look washed-out when exposed properly.

You can adjust the contrast several ways, to reflect how much fog you would like in the image; I used the levels tool (in Photoshop), and adjusted the darks by grabbing the left slider and dragging it to the right. Hold down the "ALT" Key while moving the slider, and you will see when the darks start to clip. If you move the slider far enough to clip the darks, you loose details in the darkest parts of the image. Be aware that this might increase any noise in the image; An effect that is amplified if you start with a poorly exposed image.