Juvenile - Superb Fairy-wrens

[Chris Martinez]

I spent another excellent but very wet midday with a few different troops of Fairy-wrens. The Superbs were clearly the dominant species today with one male Superb chasing an adult male Red-backed around for quite some time and one two separate occasions. Poor little Red-backed.
Stumbled upon another family of Superbs with 3-4 young young birds that were still being fed by the adults. This image show what these little birds think of the non-stop rain we've been experiencing.
1DMMKIV, 600mm IS, 1.4x II.

ISO 1600, 1/160, f/11, +1/3

Toned down the bright patches in the BG, selective sharpening on birds and removed tiny bit of foliage that obstructed tail of bird on the left.

[Craig Brelsford]

Your portrait is Superb in more ways than one. The BG may be angry, but the three little ones quickly soothe the eye.

[Chris Martinez]

You have away with words :D

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hi Chris, sounds like you had a great day out there! Very cute image, these guys look so cuddly:) I like their overall poses and the central placement within the frame works well with the opposite head angles. Yes, the BG is problematic, and some of the larger patches show signs of you having them toned down as they look grayish in the middle (burn tool?). Photographing with a larger aperture may have helped render the BG a bit more smoothed out.

[Bill Dix]

The three birds are wonderful! Shooting with bright light penetrating a dark foliage background presents a difficult situation, and tough to remedy in PP. I'd love to hear someone's solution to fixing this image, since it has such great subjects.

[Chris Martinez]

burn tool?.

Yes. I don't know any other way to remedy it:o

[Chris Martinez]

I'd love to hear someone's solution to fixing this image, since it has such great subjects.

So would I Bill:D

Unfortunately the sky was heavily clouded and the vegetation was not thick enough.

[Mark Young]

A really cute composition Chris.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I'd love to hear someone's solution to fixing this image, since it has such great subjects.

It would be a tough one to fix really. Since the subjects are at about the same focal plane they could have been photographed with a wide-open aperture to minimize the BG elements. The bright spots would still be there, but less defined at the edges. I'm wondering if the uncropped version has lots of green to clone into those bright areas (at reduced opacity), but it could be alot of work to make it look "real"...more work than I would normally put in to an image so I'd probably leave this one as is and just enjoy the happy trio:)

[Chris Martinez]

Thanks, Daniel! I thought of cloning in green over the white spots but also came to the conclusion that it would be very tedious as the birds overlap on a few of the spots(mainly the bird on the left). It's just too bad as I got so many cute poses and different combos of birds on the perch. :(

Cheers:)

[George Cottay]

Do you happen to shoot these to RAW? This fine shot looks like a perfect candidate for the use of some selective exposure control.

[Chris Martinez]

Do you happen to shoot these to RAW? This fine shot looks like a perfect candidate for the use of some selective exposure control.

I most certainly do, George. I have about 50 more shots filled with cuteness(from 1-4 birds including a feeding shot) quite a few of which I would love to work on.
I will google "selective exposure control".:)

[Chris Martinez]

A really cute composition Chris.

Thanks, Mark:cool:

[George Cottay]

I most certainly do, George. I have about 50 more shots filled with cuteness(from 1-4 birds including a feeding shot) quite a few of which I would love to work on.
I will google "selective exposure control".:)

Whoops, I didn't ask about your editors.

In Adobe Camera Raw the tool is the Adjustment Brush. With that brush selected and it's size and feather adjusted to your liking you specify how much less exposure you want and paint the changes on the image.

If the background positions stay constant, you can even usefully include the spot exposure corrections in a synchronize with other images.

[Chris Martinez]

Thanks, George. I'll have a look at it:)