Most of my images so far have been about how hard I worked to find certain birds and how much I traveled to get them. Here we talk about using what we have close to us and creating great images of common species.
Location
This photograph was taken in my backyard in Costa Rica using my regular photography equipment.
Preparing the Scene
I saw some birds feeding on erythrina edulis flowers and immediately knew there was a good photo opportunity. I picked a flower that had a natural green backdrop and positioned myself for any bird to perch on it as I knew I would get some good shots when they do.
Composing the Shot:
In less than a few minutes this female honeycreeper came in to check on the flower and I managed to get some nice shots of it. The trick is to be patient and wait for the bird to be in the right position.
Lighting:
Perfecting in Post-Processing:
This is how my image straight out of my camera looked like:
As always, the first planstep is to take care of the RAW file and process the image to get it as close as possible to the final one.
As seen above, I dropped the exposure a bit and increased contrast to get more details on those dark red eyes.
I also added more vibrance. In the color correction palette, I added more reds and orange to the image.
Next, I opened the RAW file to edit in Photoshop and cropped it.
Next, I reduced brightness and added contrast to the image :
A bit of color correction to get closer to actual light when I got the image
The next step was to fix the background and remove some of the distractions using the brush tool. First select the subject and reverse the selection to work only on the background.
Next, I added more vibrance to the overall image. This is how it looked:.
Once this was done my image was ready for resizing and sharpness as the 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 files to sRGB and save remains the same as always.
About The Bird
The Green Honeycreeper is a type of Tanager which is also called Saí-Verde in South Mexico and South Brazil where it can be found and they can also be spotted on the island of Trinidad. This songbird is often found in pairs or in a mixed flock. The sexual distinction in this species is clear. The male has shiny blue-tinged green feathers with darker edges and the eyes are redder than females. The female bird has apple-green feathers with yellowish-green underparts, lacks the shiny black head of the male and its eyes are reddish-brown. The Honeycreepers in Eastern Brazil is slightly greener than other species. They feed on nectar, fruits, plant seeds and insects. While the female Honeycreeper builds the nest, the nestlings are taken care by both male and female birds.
