Striated Grasswren

[Rob Drummond]

The grasswrens have an almost cult status among Australian birders - a combination of their often remote locations, silvery plumage and electric calls make them real favourites. The Striated is the most widespread being found in porcupine grass across most of inland Australia. Had to endure a dust storm, 100F heat and the tent blowing over twice to get this and then come home.
I attempted to remove the lower twig but found the cross hatching of oof grass stems more difficult than I had assumed.

Canon 1D2n with 500/f4 and 1.4X exp comp -1/3

cheers Rob

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

I really like the pose,composition and the details!

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Hi Rob,
Love the background colour. Lot of details. I like the pose with the tail up.

[Keith Bauer]

I attempted to remove the lower twig but found the cross hatching of oof grass stems more difficult than I had assumed.

Canon 1D2n with 500/f4 and 1.4X exp comp -1/3

cheers Rob

This is a really nice image. The lower twig is a little distracting. Here's a shot at removing it. I just used the patch tool in CS3 to select pieces of the branch and replacing them with other parts of the background. Hope this is OK to play with your image and see what it looked like without the branch...
Keith

I realized after I posted this reply that I changed the color space so the colors are not as nice as your original. Sorry about that. It was about the twig anyway..... oops.

[Ramon M. Casares]

I love it, thesse type of birds with long large tails are not usually easy to compose and you did very well, the BG

[Ramon M. Casares]

...couldn't be batter and light is great! I didin't really mind the second perch in the orig. Congratulaitons!! Great shot!

[Daniel Cadieux]

I didn't mind the second branch either, but the repost work by Keith looks good (except for his switch of colour space :-) ) A great looking species, and you did well to overcome your obstacles to get him so nicely.

[Stephen Stephen]

Rob congratulations on your dedication to create an image of this species and share it with us. I was not that bothered with the second branch but I really like Keith's efforts to remove the OOF gras stems.

[Tony Whitehead]

Great job, Rob. Lovely light and pose and I really like the feather detail and textures. Keith has done well with the BG texture.

[Dean Ingwersen]

Really nice image Rob...you and Simon cleaned up didn't you?! I don't mind the second branch at all. Great light, pose and really sharp. Top stuff. And a great description of the joys of photographing in the mallee - it's all glamour! ;)

Cheers, Dean

[Raymond Barlow]

really cool shot, I like the original edit, just seems more real., but the edit from Kieth is very cool.