Cindy Marple
November 2024 - Kids Play
Original
About the Image(s)
Hyacinth Macaws are the largest of the Macaw family. One of the treats of a visit to Brazil’s Pantanal region is finding these birds at the lodges, where they are relatively accustomed to people. This is an adult bird and the prior year’s offspring, who hasn’t yet completely left home. The light situation was challenging, with the birds remaining in the shade of the trees with bright sun overhead. Flash wasn’t an option. So in my post processing, I selected the birds and increased the exposure on them to try to even out the scene but not to the point it looked too artificial. Any other ideas about dealing with this? I denoised in Topaz Photo AI. Nikon Z9, 100-400 at 240mm, 1/800, f/5.6, ISO1000.
9 comments posted
Cindy you did a great job of bringing out the darks in the birds. You did have to sacrifice a bit on the difficult bright highlights but I think you handled it very well. What a nice pose with the interaction and nice perch. Very nice image, Bruce Posted: 11/12/2024 06:15:16
Always a tough act to pull off when your subject is surrounded by bright light. There's a device that some photographers use (I think it's called a Better Beamer) that is essentially a fill flash on steroids, but you run the risk of scaring the birds. My approach, and mine is hardly the last word on the subject, would be to select out the birds from the background, brighten them even more to extract more detail, then invert the subject and darken and/or blur the background. Posted: 11/12/2024 16:38:37
Just a quick and sloppy alternative to illustrate my point: Posted: 11/12/2024 16:45:49
I've used Better Beamers in the past, particularly in film days, but flash wasn't an option here. And I don't really like to use it, one extra thing to deal with. I would rather work on it in post.
I hadn't thought about trying to darken the background, will give that a try. Thanks. Posted: 11/12/2024 19:32:42
I hadn't thought about trying to darken the background, will give that a try. Thanks. Posted: 11/12/2024 19:32:42
Thanks Jerry for the suggestion and motivation to work on the background. Since I already had a subject mask, I made another layer and inverted it, then brought down the exposure and contrast in that background layer. Also brightened the overall image a little more. I like it better and may keep tweaking along this line. I have a number of images of these birds in this setting that I can play with. I wish flash wasn't such a pain to use, it would've helped here for sure. Posted: 11/15/2024 02:25:29
Cindy ... my intent is not create a controversy but I like how you processed it. Lighting up the birds is very tricky and I think what you did looks naturally good. A great capture too. Posted: 11/18/2024 17:22:39
Cindy, here is my humble attempt to improve the background using the background and subject mask tools in Adobe Raw. I also cropped a bit off to just eliminate some of the brightest areas in the background. I am sure that all of us have had similar situations since birds like trees so we have to shoot into the bright light shining above them. Bruce Posted: 11/19/2024 16:40:27
Thanks Bruce. Good to see some alternative edits. Posted: 11/19/2024 18:24:28
Cindy - Very good timing in Capturing some interaction of these lovely birds. You did a good job in lightening the birds, with good feather detail shown.
I prefer your updated image as to background. I think we use a very similar system in situations like this - Mask the birds, work on it/them - then invert the mask to work on the background (here I find its a fight to stop the brightness while stopping these areas going grey. I play with White/Highlight sliders to of this in Lightroom). Posted: 11/20/2024 17:37:56
I prefer your updated image as to background. I think we use a very similar system in situations like this - Mask the birds, work on it/them - then invert the mask to work on the background (here I find its a fight to stop the brightness while stopping these areas going grey. I play with White/Highlight sliders to of this in Lightroom). Posted: 11/20/2024 17:37:56