Feels so good to be able to recognise the birds and know their names without having to look it up. :)
Well just a couple of photos. Took them while walking around in my dads backyard. Light wasnt great. These are best two of what I got today.
Spot me if you can Silvereye
New Holland Honeyeater
Hmmm ALex.... you been messing with these? LOL Nice birds to catch anyway.
Sunshine Coast Queensland
Hi birdie. Yeah I brought the exposure up by about a stop. The birds were very strongly backlit. :)
I was born to live and I live to die.
So the white sky lookon the 2nd one was there anyway? Looks like you've extracted the bird & flower. Ha ha.... I have been messing around in Elements 9 ( free trial has expired so I am back to basics) and also an Arcsoft programme that I think I got with my camera. I really need to read up on what I am doing though as I am just hit and missing at the moment. I must admit it can save an absolutely crap shot. I seem to be an expert at those at the moment. And the grey weather conditions don't help. I even came out of the rainforest yesterday ..... and ended up under the trees again. Funny how birds love trees isn't it? :'p
Sunshine Coast Queensland
Did you increase it in post process? In that case you will introduce noise into the dark tones for sure. Best to increase exposure in camera even if it looks a little washed out on the LCD (shoot RAW of course). If you don't shoot raw then get the exposure as good as possible in camera or the jpeg will suffer. With strongly backlit scenes the camera may (depending on metering mode used) grossly underexpose the image. You need to expose for the darker tones and it will mean that generally in situations like this you WILL blow the sky totally featureless.
Birdie, Windhover:
The sky was grey and the bird was backlit. I shoot both raw and jpg. I use the jpg for quick gratification and raw if I need to touch it up like I did in this case.
I had over exposed in camera by 2/3 of a stop which was not enough. During post processing I overexposed by another 2/3 of a stop from memory. What that did is bring out the bird but blow out the sky to that white background which is why it looks like a cut and paste I guess :) I know you all appreciate nature for what it is and I promise I will not post anything here that has been PP to something it was not when I took the photo. (hand on heart).
What I posted was a crop and had exposure compensation added.
Here is the original for reference :)
I was born to live and I live to die.
I like this effect - it looks like a birthday card image. I have done plenty of white skies myself
Wow ...great comparison shot Alex. No argument from me, I was not meaning it as a criticism at all LOL. You can take your hand off your heart now, I believe you :')
Yes Birdgirl it does look like a birthday card...all those pretty flowers and a bird stuck right there ...ha ha .The Tibouchinas look unnatural in any of my shots a anyway because of their beautiful colour.
Sunshine Coast Queensland