Julian Sark - SarkNews

Assorted Photography here. Pro shitposting on Twitter. Click 'View Post' to view individual entries. Click pictures to embiggen.

[sarknews]

Heron seemed slightly intrigued by the clackity-clack of my new, old, camera acquisition: A Nikon D70 with a kit lens and a 70-300mm Sigma lens. A lucky flea market find (the camera, not the bird) for the occasional "semi-retro" feel :)

[sarknews]

These birds are reddish except for the last one which I tried to edit, which probably makes it greenish for people without botched color vision.

Why are the birds red? Well, since you asked, the long answer is: This is involountary IR photography.

Apparently these birds look black to us, but they reflect in the infrared like a mirror. This is especially so in direct sunlight. That light gets reflected back to the camera sensor, where the coating ahead of the Bayer filter does not absorb all of the infrared. A few percent pass and get registred as magenta. The automatic white balance might amplify those magenta tones, because it sees a lot of green in the scene and tries to balance it. This does not visibly tone down the green, but it tones up the magenta some more. Additionally, Sony cameras raise contrast in dark areas when shooting JPEG, raising the magenta level even more.

Ravens and similar birds are especially susceptible to this effect: the feathers have extremely fine structures which act like prisms to reflect IR, while the pigments underneath make the feathers appear black to us. This serves to keep the birds cool in sunlight. Other black animals such as black bears don't reflect nearly as much IR, to retain heat. Even other black birds, such as cormorants, reflect a lot less IR: Their feathers are not entirely waterproof and not as fine-grained. The more "glare" a bird exhibits on it's highlights to the human eye in bright sunlight, the more it will reflect in infrared. And white birds? Well, the other color channels get a lot more saturated, so any "IR bleed" isn't nearly as noticable.

The short answer is: I no see color good, and I liked the birds with the magenta tint. So I left most of these pictures as they were.

Also, finally a compelling reason to shoot RAW: That still captures "IR bleed", but 14 bits lets one eliminate the magenta tone "in post" much better than 8-bit JPEG.

[sarknews]

[sarknews]

It's a little known fact that there's left turning swans, right turning swans, and turn-agnostic swans. Only the left-turning ones are probiotic, and left- and right-turning swans must never come together or they annihilate in a flash of energy, white fluff and swan rage.

[sarknews]

My friends said I will be the proprietor of a stock photo library full of ducks. And that animals doing stuff in the wild makes for exciting images. So here's a seagull eating a dead rat.

[sarknews]

[sarknews]

[sarknews]

[sarknews]

[sarknews]

[sarknews]

Büsum KiteFest(tm). It's free once you pay for the beach access, so it's free technically. Also, for anyone now hearing the crab rave in their head: I'm sorry. But do please spend less time around Uncle Linus, mkay?

[sarknews]

Location location location! This building is unaffordable to me. Idk whether that's purely down to location, or also on account of shared cost: Presumably incured when unlucky kite surfers have to be hosed off of the facade.

[sarknews]

Kite festival at the North Sea coast. Some say they are as high as a kite. I was clearly higher.

[sarknews]

Kite surfing at Büsum, German north coast. The Artemis astronauts may be furthest away from Earth today, but I recon one bad gust of wind and these guys go to space. Or, you know, at least make like the wind does: landfall.

[sarknews]

[sarknews]

[sarknews]

"What do you mean 'shithole' this is my home you are talking about puny flightless human who can't even properly digest garbage!"