Story of The Image
Here I photographed and created this image of a remarkable species from the Amazonian Rainforests called Cobalt winged parrot. This species is usually seen flying in large flocks in the forest canopy and they usually stay high. The only way to get clear shots of them is to find a salt lick where they are seen at eye level. To create this moment of natural history, I traveled to Ecuador, and flew from the capital of Quito to a small town called Coca.
From Coca, I traveled in a speed boat for 2.5 hours into the river, got off at a small patch of land, walked inside the forest for thirty minutes, and took another rowboat for thirty more minutes to reach our lodge.
Gear / Preparing the Scene
Photographing wildlife in the Amazon rainforest needs patience, technique, and, above all, knowledge of the species and habitat.
I had to work with the local expert and tribal guide called Churri (in the indigenous Quechua language) to get this image. His overall knowledge of birds and the forest was unmatched. Without him, this shot would be impossible.
Composing The Shot
As seen in the image, a few hundred birds are visible. Taking such a shot that captures the moment’s intensity and tells a compelling story is not easy. I managed to photograph a few hundred photos during the short time frame that the birds were feeding at the Clear Lake.
Composing the image was a big challenge because the birds kept moving during the entire duration of my photography. My idea was to show as many birds as possible in the frame, so I chose one of the frames where there was action and sharp birds in the frame.
Perfecting in Post-Processing
Initial camera raw edits
Step 1: As seen below I chose daylight white balance and pushed the exposure and contrast to get more depth. I also adjusted the vibrance to push the Blues and greens in the frame.
The image was now ready to be edited.
I wanted a frame that depicts the natural habitat of the species. To do this,I decided not to crop the image.
The first step was to introduce a layer of shadow highlights. To keep the mystery in the image, I decided not to recover any shadows but rather to only adjust the highlights.
While the image looked almost ready to go now, I wanted some more vibrance. For this, I added a layer of Vibrance and Saturation.
As seen in the above screenshot this image looks more colorful than the previous one.
The next step was to add some Brightness and Contrast for a little extra push. While sharing content on social network like Instagram, it is very likely that the app will suppress the image quality. To counteract this, I over saturate some images while I’m editing them in Photoshop.
Our image is now ready to be resized and saved. As a rule of thumb, I always resize a horizontal image with 2000 pixels on the longer side. This image was no exception.
Once resized, I then use Smart Sharpen to sharpen my image.
Now it’s time to save it to the right profile.
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 cobalt blue feathers of this bird make it easily distinguishable during flight, which remain inconspicuous when perched. The body is light green and there is yellow on the edges of the wing, and it has a short tail. They make shrill calls when traveling in large groups and can be found in humid forests and semi-wooded areas of the lower tropical zone, forest edge, cultivated fields, riverbanks and gardens.
