Boodjamulla Birds #2

[Colin Driscoll]

Painted Finch.

This would be the worst of my finch shots (that I'm prepared to post here!) but it's such a handsome bird I thought I would share it. I followed these around and struggled to get a reasonably clear shot and then it had to be heavily backlit, flash didn't fire (someone forgot to turn it on) a bit too elevated, tail missing and its a reasonably heavy crop. So here goes...

50D 100-400 @ 400 1/500 f14 +1ev iso400

Should I wipe out all of that BG stuff, or maybe just what's in front of the bird?

[Tom Rambaut]

Just great to see this species. On a trip to Camerons Corner (Sturt national Park) one of the group spotted one. I did not see it:(

I think the background stuff works in this photo - not sure. The thing is you don't have a line running throught the head

Not that experienced with the fixing stuff but I guess the white nature of the background would make it all that harder to do a good clean up job.

[Randy Stout]

Colin:

Good self critique here. He is a lovely bird though.

Striking eye.

I would be inclined to crop down from the top about 40% of the free space, a bit from the right.

The BG reeds don't bother me much, but if I were to work on them, I would remove the darker one behind his back, and the closest one to the bill.

cheers

Randy

[Bill Dix]

Spectacular bird. Too bad about the flash -- I don't know if a little s/h would help? And of course HA is less than ideal. But I'm glad you posted this one. I'd love to see it someday. You did well just to capture it cleanly.