Bourke's Parrot photographed near Cunnamulla, south-west Queensland. These birds are uncommon birds of the arid Australian interior.
Canon 40D, EF500 f/4 + 1.4 tc, 580EX flash, tripod, Evaluative, Av, f/5.6, 1/200, ISO400, fec -1 1/3. Slight crop for composition, a prominent dead branch just to right of bird digitally pruned, along with some other twigs.
Lovely image Simon, these birds have such subtle colors. Unfortunately I've only seen them flying over out at Cunnamulla. I think I would have done one more bit of pruning and removed the last small twig under the bird. Excellent BG too.
Lovely species, good colours nice BG and sharpness in most of the bird. I think however there is something weird going on with the sharpness of the perch and the end of the tail did you forget to shapen some of the image or did you use quick mask to paste some pieces of another shot into this one??? Apart from that very nice, congrats on getting this rarity.
Lovely image Simon. Not too fussed about the twig, but I do think the point of focus is on the wing and wonder if some selective sharpening on the head can help. Killer bg btw.
Thank you all for you comments. I only managed to get one burst of images of this bird before it flew off. I do think the focus is on the wing, and so the face is not quite as sharp, though oddly the eye does look relatively well defined, perhaps the uniformly structured (soft) feathers around the face are adding to the effect. I did apply a around of high-pass sharpening which I have found works well with scalloped feathering. The only thing I did do to the branch on the right was to darken it a bit with the burn tool.
Last edited by Simon Bennett; 07-27-2009 at 07:16 PM.
Reason: grammer: uniform feathers -> uniformly structured (soft) feathers
I like the BG and colors. Nice soft light. I'd leave the thin branch underneath. Funnily, I was thinking of the headsharpness when I viewed it first. Probably could have stopped down a little since you were on a tripod (not you, the rig) :)
Thanks for sharing.
Wow! An uncommon bird on an open perch and with a beautiful BG, I'd be really content with such a result. You guys have a great variety of parrots in Austrailia, would love to see some pictures of Rosellas.