Story of the Image
This species is found across Central America in the lowlands. For me, what makes this image unique is the flight pattern and the underwings , which is very difficult to achieve without mirrorless technology. The fast autofocusing system coupled with high speed subject tracking and frame rate is a game changer when it comes to high speed wildlife photography.
Location
I photographed this bird in the lowland rainforest of Costa Rica in a place called Boca Tapada , which sits at the very edge of the country right next to Nicaragua. the place is located inside a rainforest lodge called laguna lagarto lodge where i setup feeding stations for birds and sometimes we would get lucky with amazing species like this parrot.
Composing the Shot
The key to a shot like this is to understand the behavior of the bird and your camera alike. Knowing that the birds are always in groups and at feeders, we position the fruits bananas much higher from the perch, which makes them fly up to eat. At this moment, we use the eye detection feature on the camera to lock the focus on the bird.
Lighting
There was no artificial light used in this image. I used the available natural light to get this image.
Perfecting in Post-processing
This is how my image straight out of my camera looked: as seen in the image the overall image looks a bit dark so my first task was to lift the overall brightness in the image.
As always, the first plan is to take care of the RAW file and process the image to get it as close as possible to the final image.
I decreased highlights to fix the white patch near the eyes and bumped up the shadows and colors to emphasize the underwings.
Color palette edits: Fixing colors in the raw file is one of the easiest ways to color correct an image. By using the saturation palette we can add or reduce individual colors in an image
Next, I added brightness and added contrast to the image:
A bit of color correction to get closer to actual light when I got the image
One last step was to clone the branch from the bottom right of the screen. To do that i select the clone stamp tool, shortcut S. Next I sample the area that I want to clone from by pressing ALT + Left click and then simply paint over the branch that I want to remove from the frame.
As always the last step was to resize and sharpen the image, but this time, I was trying out a new software called Sharpen AI by Topaz Labs. For me, the best part of this software is how it sharpens and removes noise from the overall image in 1 step . Take a look:
To run this program, I select Filter > Topaz Labs > AI Sharpen. Here i select the option Motion Blur – Normal and the rest is done by AI. I click apply to accept changes and continue editing.
The process to convert files to sRGB and saving remains the same as always.
Next, convert to profile for saving.
Final Image
About The Bird
These medium-sized parrots belong to the southern parts of the Gulf of Mexico, Western Panama and Western Ecuador. They can be spotted on treetops and edges, semi-open woodland and second growth areas and their habitat is threatened by deforestation. It is hard to notice their brilliant red armpits as they fly fast in pairs or small groups, but when perched you can notice their brown hood, red ear patch, pale bill and eye rings. They call out in rolling kereek sound during flight and make gurgles and squeaks when perched. The sub-species of Brown Hooded Parrots are Red-Necklaced Parrots and Colombian Brown Hooded Parrots.
