Dozens of these parrots passing through our garden daily... | Nature and Wildlife photos | Photo Forum

easyexposure said
Cool photo. It is interesting that the parrot is almost the same color of leaves. It is easier for him to be unnoticeable. I notices that the edges of the photo are desaturated. Did you do it on purpose? 

Actually I did this on purpose just because – like you said – there is almost no difference between the colour of the leaves and the parrot, ha, ha! But these ones pass through our garden every day by dozens. Earlier this week we had three Ara’s, the big ones with blue and yellow, they are absolutely fabulous! Missed my chance though to take a sharp picture of those, they are just too fast

By the way, this one was sitting very high in our Guave-tree, but thanks to my 135mm and 20,2MP I had lots of cropping space

easyexposure said
Interesting approach. I would probably just darken the edges, instead of desaturating them and brighten the bird. 

I tried to darken the edges, but didn’t like the result. I cannot say that I like this result any better though… Maybe I should have kept it just the way nature ment it to be: hidden and surrounded by its own colour…

easyexposure said
Can you post the original, so we can see? 

I thought I could, but it as far as I can see it seems that I threw the original away. Sorry about that. I wasn’t all that exited about the picture I guess. I hope to get a better chance next time when I find one sitting in the palmtree. It makes a much better shot.

Do you shoot in Raw? Do you use Lightroom? It is nondestructive editing, where you can always go back to your original. If not, I think you should give it a try. I’ll love it. I am going to post a beginner course on Lightroom for VIP Students.

Actually I don’t have lightroom nor photoshop. The only post processing I do at the moment is with Canon’s own software Digital Photo Professional (for the RAW editing), Google Picasa (for cropping and mainly saturation settings) and sometimes Gimp. I do not always work with RAW. Only for important occasions (my son married recently) and in places with poor light conditions like indoors. It gives me the possibility to reset the white balance.

easyexposure said

The first lesson about using Lightroom has been posted: Getting Started with Adobe Lightroom.  You should check it out! 

You bet I will, great idea! Thanks Oksana!