I apologize for my lack of participation in the past week but I have been without free time and lots of works at the office. This image is from the past weekend when I decide to have a look at the pratincole´s breeding colony. A couple of pairs remains but all the other birds has gone after completing the breeding.
I decided to try some backlighting images and this guy posed for me a lot of time and I decide to use custom white blance to enhace a bit the fantastic warm light of the end of the day.
By the way, the nice light on the bird I think is due to the fact that my car (white color) is very close to the bird and acted as a light reflector!
Nikon D300 AFSNikkor 500VR ISO800 f8 1/1250s full frame
Hi Juan,
normally I would have wanted a bit more light (fill flash).....but the rim light is very nice and looks like the car/reflector did the trick to open up the shadows. Glad to see you getting out some as I know the feeling all to well. Nice and unusual with a sweet BG.
Gorgeous warm light, Juan, even if you have to park your white car in the right place! BG looks slightly noisy. Is this a candidate for PP to a backlit bird? Certainly a winner as is!
I love the backlighting and resulting rim light. I think the pose is nice with a good head angle. I also find the background to be pleasing. If it were mine I might try and lighten the bird a little. I also might try and tone down the bright part of the rock in the lower right hand corner (our right). Overall I like this very much. Good show.
Thank you guys for the comments and suggestions. Much apreciated :-)
Regarding the use of fill flash or reprocessing the image to lighten the bird more I considered both options. I had my flash with me but decided not to use it and I can lighten the bird in PS without problems but I decided to keep the original light because I wanted a backlight image (but not a black silouette against a golden BG).
The reason why is very simple. I have a good amount of images of this species with direct sunlight but this was my first oportunity to get a decent backlight of this species.
By the way, this guy posed for me like a profesional model for about half an hour and I made a lot of images with different light angles, with and without the 1,4XTC, placing the car in different angles to increase the effect of light reflection. Yeah, amazing but the bird allowed a lot of car movements :-D
Of course, I have images of this guy in backlight but without the beautiful presence of the light rim and with the bird more lightened. ;-)
I love the natural light here Juan. It is perfectly exposed, with just enough detail in the feathers. I'm envious of the opportunity, we also get them here in southern Africa but its very difficult to photograph them. Well done on this effort - inspiring to me!
Collared pratincole (Glareola pratincola) backlight
Reply With Quote
