Story Of The Image
The family of birds called Cotingas are found only in Latin America and just like the birds of paradise, umbrellabird, and fruitcrow, they display vivid colors and patterns seen in very few families of birds. While this species is known to be seen in a few places in Ecuador and Peru, the most accessible place to photograph them is Colombia.
Location
I travel to Colombian city called Jardin in the Antioquia province to find these beautiful birds. Over the last few years, Colombia has really worked on their overall image as one of the hottest places for birdwatching in the world and every year thousands of tourists flock to see some of the most remarkable birds in their natural habitats. This bird is one of the most popular!
Preparing The Scenes
The Andean cock of the rock is a community bird known to live in groups of 10-20 males with 1 or 2 females. Every day at sunrise and sundown the males congregate at one location to woo the female(s) and display their unique dance. My aim was to catch one of those rare moments. The light at this location was low, so I had to carry a sturdy tripod and predict the behavior.
Composing The Shot
I noticed that there were a couple of males that took the same route before doing their final display and waited there. To my good luck it didn’t take long for a male to show up on my desired branch. However, in nature, photography doesn’t always go as planned, and the bird decided to perch looking the opposite direction. This is actually a good opportunity to get a few shots to test the settings and make changes before getting the important ones.
Lighting:
To adjust my lighting, I used ISO 2500 , which is considered to be high, but there was no other way to get more light in the image. Since I was shooting at a protected site for wildlife, I was not allowed to use flash and shooting a high ISO was my only alternative.
Perfecting In Pre Processing
This is how my image looked straight out of my camera :
As always, the first plan is to take care of the RAW file and process to get it as close as possible to the final image.
In the Camera Raw editor, I added more contrast and reduced the highlights to fix the bright feathers on the back.
I increased the vibrance on my reds and orange to get more out of the birds colors. I also added some yellow to get a nice warm background.
Next, I opened the RAW file to edit in Photoshop.
Once open, I ran one round of shadow/highlight by selecting the following Image > Adjustments > Shadow Highlights
Now, the next step was to enhance some of the colors in the image. This is where color balance is so important in all my edits. Not only does it help in enhancing some colors selectively, but also adds more brightness and contrast.
Next, I added some brightness to the eyes selectively using the Quick Selection tool .
Rest of the image was left untouched as I wanted to keep it as natural as possible.
As always, the last step was to resize and sharpen the image before
Once this was done my image was ready for resize and sharpness as last steps. I resized the file to my desired online posting size of 1800 pixels on the longer side and then ran smart sharpen at 72% to get my desired file.
The process to convert file to sRGB and saving remains the same as always.
About The Bird
The brilliant orange crest of the male Andean Cock of the Rock sets them apart, their black and white feathers are a perfect contrast to it. While the females have a lighter shade. They are found in the Andes from Venezuela to Bolivia, build nests on rocky cliff surfaces, boulders and caves. Their strong legs and claws are adapted to grasp on to the steep cliffs and rocks. Their performance at the leks is mindboggling!
