The Histogram

Asian Koel - female

Eudynamys scolopacus

นกกาเหว่า

By consequence of being laid low I took some time to look carefully at some of my digiscoped photographs over the last year. Somehow or other I found myself learning about tonal histograms and "blinking highlights". In other words incorrect exposure and as a result the many might-have-been shots on my hard drive. More to the point I have discovered what I should know already: how to use the histogram to get a good image.

Now the depressing thing is that in a lot of my shots the highlights are blown as are my shadows.And I went out tonight to try and give effect to what I have learned. I am really very pleased with this female Asian Koel which I shot in dodgy light in the final hour of daylight today. It's a lovely bird and bucks the trend of the male bird having the good looks. Thanks to the bird being quite settled I was able to take a few shots, look at their histograms and then make adjustments. There are no blown highlights in the above and the shadows and blacks are likewise within scale. This is a first step and as I say the light wasn't very good so I am pleased to get this shot of this bird. I am pleased with the detail. It's another step up the learning curve and I hope it's going to give me some decent shots.

Ashy Woodswallow

Artmaus fuscus

นกแอ่นพง

 I am equally pleased with this Ashy Woodswallow, a bird I have found very difficult to photograph. Once more I am pleased with the range of tones especially the lighter ones in the bird's bill which nevertheless have some good detail. This is a very exciting moment in my development!

The Soi List

Olive-backed Sunbird

Soi 11.02.11

ซอย pronounced Soi means street in Thai. It doesn't mean the main drag rather a smaller road, think of Sukhumwit in Bangkok and the hundreds of sois that run off it. We live in a soi and our soi like most sois has soi dogs! We have a lot of stray dogs all over Thailand.  Our soi also has a lot of birds and I think the time has come to start a soi list. I say this because I was amazed by the number of species I saw in the course of an hour while pushing my baby boy about in his pram after work in the late afternoon.

Yellow-vented Bulbul

Soi 11.02.11

Our house is situated in a small estate facing  a golf driving range. There are a couple of little side streets running off the main soi and they abut onto rice paddy but the village does not have a through road so apart from when the soi dogs kick off it is fairly peaceful here. While the area is residential it is not too built up and beyond the golf range it is very much cultivated rice paddy with pockets of trees and scrub and various natural and man made irrigation channels. The driving range is busy late afternoon and early evening so not many birds then but in the mornings there can be several hundred cattle egrets feeding on the grass.

 Green Bee-eater

Soi 11.02.11

The criterion for getting onto the soi list will be that the bird can be seen from the soi. Number one on this new list will be Pied Harrier, a male, which I watched flying over the little bit of rice paddy nearby before flying off in the direction of the main rice paddy area. Next Scaly Breasted Munia, Little Egret, Common Myna, Pied Fantail, Brown Shrike, Red-collared Dove, Spotted Dove, Peaceful Dove, Streak-eared Bulbul, White-vented Myna, House Sparrow, Tree Sparrow, Plain-Backed Sparrow, Yellow-Vented Bulbul, Sooty-headed Bulbul, Asian Pied Starling, Asian Koel (heard), Green Bee-eater, Olive-backed Sunbird and Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker. Excluding the Koel that gives the soi list a kick start of 20 species! I'll not add sightings prior to today and I will try to get photographs of as many of these birds as possible.

Asian Koel: Often Heard, not Always Seen!

Well here is a first venture into Video using the digiscope rig......videoscoping. The Asian Koel can be heard virtually everywhere in Thailand including the heart of Bangkok. You are more likely to have heard it than to have seen it. Anyway it posed for me on an otherwise lacklustre trip round to the local rice paddy so as I have been meaning to try video here is a first offering. The quality is not brilliant but it makes me think what would be possible with a HD camera. And below a couple of still photographs of the same fellow.