Mulga Parrot (Psephotus varius) Gluepot Reserve SA
Mulga Parrot (Psephotus varius) Gluepot Reserve SA
Canon EOS 40D Lens 100-400mm L IS USM at 400mm ISO 400 F9.0 1/1250 fill flash 10 October 2009
Taken on first morning at Gluepot Reserve SA nice warm day then for next few days weather turned unseasonably cold and windy ...result very few birds interested in visiting watered bird hides. However this male Mulga Parrot came in quickly and was then gone. Gluepot Reserve is a property run by Birds Australia and is situated in the mallee just north of Waikerie South Australia and is 126,700 acres. Well worth consideration for overseas visitors, however it would be best to view publications on the area see : http://www.riverland.net.au/gluepot/visit.html
Thanks vfor viewing
Best regards
Rod Warnock
Rod, I love to see images of Parrots in the wild. Sometimes I forget thats where they are from since I only ever see them in pet stores. You got excellent detail here and his colors are amazing. BG really shows him off nicely and I like the perch. I'd crop some off the bottom and left for my taste though. Congrats
Good light, sharpness and colours, Rob. BG sets the colours off well. Agree with Brain on cropping from left and below to maximise the diagonal of the perch and decentre the bird. There seems to be some blurring of the edges of the perch below the head and the impression of a wide soft halo on parts of the bird.
What a pretty bird. There is an unfortunate BG halo around the tail and the end of the body. It looks like it is just part of the background and not caused by something in post processing. I'd work to tone it down. I'd crop to have the perch coming out of the lower left corner. To avoid making that too tight, a simple rotation of the image during the crop would work well.
Thank you all for your comments very much appreciated as a newcomer to digital although I have been around a fair while as during the 1960's I competed in most PSA Nature Slide Internationals (I know!! I know!! Many of you weren't born then :))
Keith and Tony commented on the halo and I too noticed it and wondered if I had added it as an artifact of the cloning out the limbs plus some Gaussian Blur to smooth the cloning.
So here is a warts and all crop with no cloning and no blurring. The halo is from the OOF area to right of bird and goes right through to the tail area
As you can see photography in the mallee scrublands makes for a busy BG. Image taken in a tree adjaent to a permanent bird hide where a water facility is provided for the birds (no feeding done only water)
Thanks again
Rod
Last edited by Rod Warnock; 11-21-2009 at 04:33 PM.
Rod, my approach would be to make a QM selection of the BG just above the bird and copy and move it a number of time to cover the branches above the bird. Then protect the bird with another QM and blur the BG on another layer so that I can mask away any blur that spills over the bird/perch with a layer mask. Some use of the clone stamp in lighten/darken mode can help even out any residual dark/pale areas. Others may have some better/quicker approaches.
Mulga Parrot (Psephotus varius) Gluepot Reserve SA
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