The final day at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for the Festival of the Cranes we had snow in the morning…not just on the ground but still falling. It was challenging light for flight shots…just not enough of it…but it was also a very gentle, very uniform, light, with a lot reflected back from the snow covered ground. It made for interesting flight shots. Cranes fly in formation, and this is just three of them from a larger flight, isolated with the 1200mm reach of the Canon SX50HS’ zoom. While adjusting the composition, I cropped out the head of the bird coming along behind. I really like the flow of lines here, and elegance of the wings as they cup the air.

Because of the difficult light, the images I got are far from technically perfect, and require some massaging in software to bring out the potential. Here I tried several different processing apps, each with their own unique tool set. This is processed in Photo Mate R2, an app for Android which uses many of the same processing metaphors as the original Lightroom. Like Lightroom, it is primarily a raw processor, but it works with my jpgs just fine. It has by far the most comprehensive set of editing tools of any program currently available for Android, and being modeled on Lightroom, also the most traditional set (if anyone can call Lightroom’s tools traditional). For quick, intuitive editing, nothing on Android beats Snapseed, but occasionally, you just need more control…Photo Mate R2 provides it. (And, of course, if you shoot raw…I am not aware of any other program for Android that will do what Photo Mate R2 will.)

Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 320 @ 1/1250th @ f6.5. Processing as above.