Thursday, June 11, 2009

Flash Flubbs


Flash can be a very useful photographer’s tool both indoors and out but forget it when shooting Raccoons. Encountering a family of young raccoons late in the evening last fall I decided to resort to shooting flash as it was much too dark for natural light photography.



A Cottontail sitting under my lilac bush didn’t fare well with the flash treatment either.

The use of direct flash under low-light conditions while photographing animals with good night vision is a no-win situation. The highly reflective retinas of nocturnal animals are responsible for the unbecoming Headlight effect.



16 comments:

Anonymous said...

slap those in photo shop and give them black eyes - although sometimes it's nice to see things natural. Neat shots of night time creatures...debbie

Leedra said...

Yep, I had this flubbs with the deer in the woods. Learned to double check and be sure that flash is NOT on. Glad to see some better photographers than me get caught too.

Meggie said...

They are still quite cute critters in spite of their reflective retinas.

Elaine said...

I don't know why, but I like these photos. There's just something about them, especially the raccoon. Maybe you could do a horror story series.

imac said...

Non the less Coy, great shots.
Much better than I have done.

Tom said...

I have a few shots ofa local fox that look like these... I did colour them in to good results.

Tom

Brad Myers said...

Coy, maybe you could ask them to close their eyes before you take the photo, LOL.

I also have house wrens living in my two bluebird houses. I am just glad something is using them, and they make allot of noise when I am in the area.

Adrienne Zwart said...

I have the same problem when I photograph our cat. I have tried the photo-editing to get rid of the flare with limited success.

Montanagirl said...

Good photos, though. One can fix that in photoshop I think, but not with the "red-eye" tool. It doesn't work on animal eyes with this kind of reflection.

photowannabe said...

I kind of like the caught in the headlights look. It makes for interesting shots. A bit eerie.

Ken Conger Photography said...

Yep, we low light wildlife photographers face this problem. Since there is generally no wall to do a bounce flash on, we don't have that option. As the technology increases with ISO, in the future we may be shooting at 3200 or 6400 ISO with no noise which may help solve this problem. Blue Skies.

Chris said...

Hi Coy,
These are great shots. I thought that they will flee with the flash but looks like you did not get them scared at all. Funny...

Elaine said...

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Michele said...

I think these are interesting. I haven't had any shots like these because I am usually in bed at this time of the day... heh... but the bunny has quite a neat effect.

DeniseinVA said...

Wonderful animal photos, those eyes are mesmerizing ;)

Unknown said...

I forget at times too. I hate to think of how many times I've had to photoshop out the eyes.