Little Corellas

[Paul Burdett]

Hi all. After more than two months of temps in the mid-high 30's (and too hot/humid to go birding...even at 5am) today is a "cooler" 27C...so I got the camera out of hibernation and ventured out to two locations near my home. Despite the very windy day today and boring sky I managed to capture some shots of Chestnut-breasted Mannikins (yet to edit) and some Little Corellas that were perched on a power line, but with other distracting metal cables across the lower parts of their bodies. I was able to clone out these distractions and crop the image. I wasn't sure that the crop would work, but as I wanted the focus to be on the closeness of their heads I'm happy with the result. Cheers.

[Randy Stout]

Paul:

Would make a sweet Valentine's day card. Crop works for this pose. Interesting catch lights.

Please be sure to include your camera/processing information. It helps us understand the image better.

Cheers

Randy

[Mike Poole]

I like the framing and the poses, like Randy said, would make a great card! Maybe a bit more DoF would have helped

Mike

[Arthur Morris]

Ditto Mike and Randy above. The whole thing looks too dark to me with the WHITEs looking grayed out ...

with love, artie

[Paul Burdett]

Thank you for the feedback...much appreciated.
Randy: Apart from the cloning out of electric cables, I added a little shadow recovery and adjusted the white/black points before resizing for the web. exif: f8, 1/1250 sec at 400mm iso640 in aperture priority.
Mike: more dof? shot at f8...what do you suggest here?
Artie: The birds are much "whiter" on my 27inch calibrated monitor, but have a pinkish tinge on my laptop. However, I just re-edited on my main monitor and added a levels adjustment which has helped with the whites. Thank you for the feedback. Now to calibrate my laptop! Cheers.

[gail bisson]

I am late to the party but my initial thought was that the whites could go brighter.
Love the intimate pose of the birds.
With regards to DOF I always try to get to F10 (if I have enough SS and can bump ISO up) when I have 2 birds in the frame and put the focus point halfway between the birds. In this case I would have put the focus point behind the front birds' bill. Having said all this I think the DOF is OK here.
Sweet image, made me smile.
gail

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Gail. Many thanks for your feedback and suggestions. I've seen some of your photos and they are excellent! I'll follow your advice regarding dof and placement of the focus point. So...with two birds where their eyes are more or less in a straight line you would you place the focus point in between each pair of eyes?
Cheers.