Portrait: Australian Magpie male

[Colin Driscoll]

Very difficult to get right with the stark blacks and whites on these birds- the male has very bright whites. My approach was to slightly under-expose for the blacks and hope for the best for the whites. A slight crop. Removed redundant catchlights from the eye.

50D, 100-400 @ 400, 1/100 f6.3, iso400 430EXII -1/3

[Ofer Levy]

Hi Colin, I like the eye contact and detail. White on back of the head looks blown to me. Going manual exposure and expose for the white should do the trick - you can't go wrnog this way. However, you have to do it when light is not harsh.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Good-looking bird, eye contact and soft light. I agree with Ofer on the whites.

[Randy Stout]

Colin:

Ofer covered it well. Our eyes are much more sensitive to blown whites than blocked blacks, so, always expose for the whites and deal with the blacks. The softer the light, the easier it is to capture the dynamic range of the scene. You can add in a tiny bit of flash in some circumstances to raise the shadows enough to keep them within your cameras dynamic range, but of course the risk of blowing the whites increases. Always a balancing act. As someone who takes a few common loon pictures, I appreciate the challenges of black and white birds;)

Randy

[Mark Young]

I understand your frustration Colin, I find pied birds hard to do on a good day. Nice head angle here though, I like that it's almost looking over it's shoulder. Is there a magenta caste to the image? The birds seems to be a bit purply, especially around the shoulder.

[Colin Driscoll]

Thanks for the comments, I'll see what I can do with the next opportunity.

Mark, you might be right on the magenta cast but curves indicates that it's not much- good spotting!