Story of the Image
Rred and green macaws, also called Green- winged macaws, have seen a steady decline over the years due to the increase in parrot trade and loss of habitat. In these uncertain times, this privately owned and protected area in Brazil’s Burraco dos Arraras where I shot this image, sees a huge colony of these large parrots find refuge.
Gear/ Preparing the Scene
Burraco dos arraras is an unusual place very close to the town of Bonito in Brazil. A sinkhole that sees these parrots fly around all year has become a major tourist attraction, and every bird photographer that visits Pantanal adds the location to their list.
For this shot, I knew I had to walk a lot so I brought with my Canon Eos-1DX II and 600mm lens, along with a sturdy strap to make it easy for me to lug the heavy gear around. Bringing a tripod with me would have slowed me down too much, so I left it in the car.
Composing The Shot
The macaws fly around the sinkhole in circles. As a photographer, we have two decks to shoots from on either side of the canyon. While this makes it very easy to shoot, it also ensures similar kinds of photos from everyone who visits this area.
In my mind, I wanted to achieve something different, so I waited for the birds to get as low as possible. If they did, I could to shoot them vertically from where I was standing. This approach would ensure to get them against the green, mossy lake. If I did, the bright colors of the bird would stand out against the deep green background.
Perfecting Post-Processing
For the initial Camera Raw edits, I had to tweak the image to get the exposure right. Adding contrast added some boost while extra vibrance helped the greens intensify.
The next step was to crop the image. While I usually choose a composition using the rule of thirds, I chose to break that in this case as I wanted the bird in the center of the frame. There was no real reason for this. It just appealed more to my eyes!
Once the image was cropped, I added more Vibrance to increase the blues and reds on the bird.
Next, I added slight Brightness and Contrast increases.
OurThe image is now ready to be resized and saved. As a rule of thumb, I always resize a vertical image with 1800 pixels on the longer side and this image was not an exception.
At the time of writing this case study, I was introduced to a product called Topaz AI Sharper which, in my opinion, can fix 90% of image shake. Look for yourself: –
To save,
For web prints I use sRGB. For physical prints, I use Adobe RGB
The final step is to save it as a JPEG at the highest resolution
Final Image:
About the Bird
The Red and Green Macaw are native to Argentina, and they can be spotted in the lowlands and lower foothills of tropical rainforests of central and northern America. This widely distributed bird resembles the Scarlet Macaw but lacks its yellow upper plume feathers. The size of the head is larger and there are no black feathers to mark its head. The feather marks are like thumbprints and each bird has a distinct arrangement.
