animals A young Timnah swings while observing my camera.

This was a very friendly and playful bird.

The rope is too bright and draw the attention.

Thank you, Igor, for your comment. I wondered how or if the rope would be an issue. And, right of the top you've brought it up. I will think better of it in the future. It is rather bright. I was not sure how to tone down just the rope without compromising the detail in the bird. Should have worked with lighting better than just shooting off the hip. Thank you.

This is a good picture. I think Igor's right about the rope though. I am unsure if you have Photoshop and I am by no means an expert at this, but I will try and explain it anyways. If you already know about masking then just ignore this. I am using photoshop 7, but I would imagine the previous versions will do this as well.

At the bottom of the toolbar there are two little boxes with circles in them, click on the one on the right and that puts you in quick mask mode. Then select the brush tool from the toolbar, (the idea is to paint the entire picture except the rope) increase the size of the brush to pretty large at first and paint the majority of the picture getting close to the rope, but not touching it. Then zoom the picture in so you can paint the rest of the details all the way up to the rope including the claws and the yellow star. Once you have everything painted except the rope then go back and click on the circle inside the sguare again, but this time click on the one on the left. You should now have only the rope selected, by what they call "the marching ants" the little moving lines. Now you can just adjust the "levels" to however bright you want the rope, but being careful not to adjust it too much or there will be a noticable edge around the rope. Oh, also you can use the little bracket keys [ ] to change the brush sizes and if you accidentally paint over the rope, press the x key and it allows you to unpaint it. Then press the d key to paint again. Also you can press the spacebar when you are zoomed in and the little hand shows up and you can then use the mouse to move the picture around as you are painting.

Or.... You could just try and re-take the picture, but the bird looks to be properly exposed, so I don't know how you would get the rope exposed correctly.

I will check the version I am using which is 6.0. I am still learning it myself and have much to master. This will be my next PS lesson to learn. The feedback is great and very helpful! Thanks-so-much!

I do agree with others about the rope. I like this photo. good detail, nice use of depth of field, and good composition. Light is fine except the rope. good job, T.C.

I appreciate the feedback. It all helps!

This bird is ready to go! It's really focused on you! Great shot!

Timnah is a beautiful bird. Yes, your lighting suffers from a bit of an imbalance. You might try bouncing the light off of the ceiling in order to creat a more uniform light source.

 

I made some adjustments to your photo in Photoshop, primarily so that I could see the bird a little better. But since I was there, I thought I'd share the results.

 

My technique is as follows:

 

I selected the rope with the selection wand by holding down the shift key and selecting the different parts of the rope until the entire rope was selected (there are many ways of doing this, but for me this is the fastest). Once the rope was selected I created a new layer (Layer-Create New - Via Copy).

 

Then, rather than adjust the rope, I selected the background layer and adjusted the levels (Image-Adjust-Levels) until I could see most of the detail of the bird.

 

Then, I selected the rope layer and adjusted the levels in the same way until I got it the way I liked it.

 

Just remember, Photoshop makes for lazy photographers. Don't rely on it and you'll be the better for it.

That's really good, Jeanette. I have been working with PS but am still learning it. I try not to do too much on my uploads yet on a counta I am not so great at it yet. I am learning though. Thanks for the tips. I will add them to my practice lessons.

Best regards,

TC

You can also try making your background b&w and leave the bird in color - I've been finding this is a very good way to tone down distracting backgrounds. I had a couple of bright green backgrounds that I did this to and I think it worked well. I don't agree that PS makes for lazy photographers - you still have to have a decent photo to start with most of the time. If anything, working a long time in PS to correct things you could have corrected in the camera at exposure time, should make for a better photographer, not a lazy one.