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Wishing my Best Birding Buddy (and wife) Karen a very Happy Birthday!
An now back to our regularly scheduled program…
One of our best bird photographers on GreatBirdPics is Bajadreamer. He shares excellent pics from around his home in San Diego, CA and from exotic places like some of his recent submissions from an Ecolodge southwest of São Paulo, Brazil. Not only does he (and his wife) share their pictures with us, he also shares his photographic expertise. Take his latest submission of a Red-necked Tanager.
Whenever I see one of his pictures in the Latest Gallery I click on it to view his image and to read what he wrote in the Description. As with most of his descriptions, he added a quick, “How I got the Shot” note in the picture above. In this case he shared that he lowered his EC (Exposure Compensation) to -1.0. Why? In his words, “[It had] a very dark background and I wanted to avoid blowing out the bright colors of this bird, especially the red”. When there is a dark background a camera will try to compensate by letting more light in. So by lowering the EC, he was telling the camera to accept less light so the detail in the bright red feathers is captured – otherwise they might have been recorded as a bright red blob of light.
Thanks for the tips Bajadreamer! They help me understand how to take better pictures and I hope others take note as well.
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Beautiful shot!