Back to photostream

Tui portrait

This is a shot I've had in my head since first seeing this species on my first trip to New Zealand, and one I really wanted to capture on my most recent trip. Technically, this was a challenging image to make as I needed soft diffused light to bring out the beautiful array of colors on the bird, a significantly darker or shadowed background, and a light enough (while still cloudy) day to allow me to shoot at a relatively low ISO to preserve dynamic range in both the white throat wattle and the black feathers. I actually tried this shot multiple times and wasn't really satisfied with the background or the exposure on the wattle or other nitpicky things, but in the end it came together and made one of my favorite images of the year. See the rest on my website:

 

www.alexbeckerphotography.com/Blog/Top-10-of-2019

 

Taken with a D500 + 500mm at 1/800 f/5.6 ISO 640

 

 

2,240 views
47 faves
11 comments
Uploaded on January 17, 2020