Too many times when shooting birds, backgrounds are distracting, messy, and otherwise visually annoying. If a bird is physically close to the background, even with the longest lens and the largest aperture, you can't lose enough depth of field to blur the leaves, branches, and twigs that make up the undesirable backdrop. Therefore, to elevate your images to what I call fine art, it's necessary to replace the background with out of focus foliage or -- depending on the composition -- the sky. In this shot of a yellow streaked lory from Papua New Guinea, I replaced the messy background with a picture from my files of out of focus trees. I have a folder in my photo library of dozens of foliage backgrounds for this purpose. Perhaps the most important advantage that Photoshop gives us is the ability to replace backgrounds. My settings for this picture were 1/60, f/13, 640 ISO, and I used a 70-200mm lens. I shot this in the bird park in Bali, Indonesia.
2 Comments
Aug 23, 2015, 6:28:05 PM
Jim Zuckerman - Hi Bob, I did do a tutorial about this very subject in a past issue of my free monthly eMagazine, Photo Insights. If you don't subscribe, you should. Lots of good info. But if you missed the October, 2013 issue, here is a link. You'll see the article about 3/4 of the way through the issue. Jim
http://issuu.com/jimzuckerman/docs/october__13
Aug 23, 2015, 1:03:48 PM
Bob T - I have read your tutorials for sky replacement more than once. Would you consider an additional tutorial for this replacement or a background and how you managed the edges of the subject