[PIC_THREAD] Wildlife, Animals, Birds, Zoo

Nutloose, they're crazy good. How do you get the blackness around the birds, is it by using the radial filter in lightroom or whatever pp software you use? Gives it a look as though you'd asked the birds to come and pose in your studio. :p
 
No, I waited until they were in a darkened area of the enclosure under some overhanging bushes, set the camera to spot for the exposure and exposed on the bird thus everything else tends to come out dark, then tweaked the odd bits to remove any foliage that was showing and played around with the levels lifting light, dropping blacks and shadows etc in photoshop / lightroom to get the look I wanted. Its a more hit and miss process, but you can get some decent ones, the top pelican was more over to the right so I cloned the left side flipped it and merged on the right to centralise the bird.
Similar when I processed the Flamingo I pushed the colours to bring out the pinky orange and that brought out the muted colours you don't normally see in their legs.. I thought it sort of made the colours pop.

I had the top pelican printed and framed at the highest (about 3 1/2 foot high) they could do, even I couldn't believe I had taken it when I saw it in a frame...

Merlin to do it justice look at it in flickr at full size..

https://www.flickr.com/photos/142550108@N08/32278982822/
 
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Nutloose said:
No, I waited until they were in a darkened area of the enclosure under some overhanging bushes, set the camera to spot for the exposure and exposed on the bird thus everything else tends to come out dark, then tweaked the odd bits to remove any foliage that was showing and played around with the levels lifting light, dropping blacks and shadows etc in photoshop / lightroom to get the look I wanted. Its a more hit and miss process, but you can get some decent ones, the top pelican was more over to the right so I cloned the left side flipped it and merged on the right to centralise the bird.
Similar when I processed the Flamingo I pushed the colours to bring out the pinky orange and that brought out the muted colours you don't normally see in their legs.. I thought it sort of made the colours pop.

I had the top pelican printed and framed at the highest (about 3 1/2 foot high) they could do, even I couldn't believe I had taken it when I saw it in a frame...

Merlin to do it justice look at it in flickr at full size..

https://www.flickr.com/photos/142550108@N08/32278982822/
Click to expand...

Must look amazing printed at that size! How much did that cost? Gotta be at least £200 or am i completely under or over? Seen it on your flickr page full size. Fantastic. Very detailed.
 
Nutloose you are bloody good.
Keep trying to stalk kingfishers in Sheffield ( quite a few on the city centre water ways) but can't get anywhere close enough.
Though kestrel hunting was bad !

Anywho great work!
 
Thanks everyone, i'm flattered,
Alchal, they tend to have their perches and stick to them doing circuits between each one as and when, it's a case of waiting them out, you can often tell the perches they use as they get bits of weed tangled up in them, It took me about a year to get my first shot visiting on the odd weekends, then I found another hide elsewhere where the damned things would pose on those set up branches literally 4 foot outside the windows! seriously I got bored of photographing them as I have literally hundreds of shots. There used to be about 4 or 5 peeps in the hide and it sounded like machine guns going off when they appeared... but they were not phased by the camera drives. I suppose I am lucky in that respect as I had always just wanted to see some, and then I was literally overwhelmed by them. Have you thought about setting up a dead branch over the water which is in an advantageous location for you, they may start using it.
Footman, I know what you mean, in my sixties now and its starting to feel like it humping it all about.

A few more of my Kingfishers.. The best looking British bird in my eyes.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/142550108@N08/albums/72157687869573134
 
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