The Making of: Attention!

I love shooting all animals but one of my favorites has to be birds. Not only can they be real colorful and beautiful but they are also difficult to get great shots of. Usually when people take pictures of birds, the personality isn’t captured. Birds are very expressive but many people fail to realize just how much.

                  

On one of my days off from everything, I went to the Flamingo Hotel and Casino to photograph all the animals in the habitat. In the middle of it, there are large Macaw parrots. People are able to hold the birds and get their photo taken with them. Afterwards, they are able to buy the photos. When they weren’t busy, I hung around the birds and took a lot of photographs of them. Because it was so windy that day, the bird’s feathers were almost constantly fluffed up. This called for a higher shutter speed so the feathers wouldn’t lose their detail when they blurred out. It also made the birds look snuggly and cute, resulting in amazing photographs.

This shot of Tico was my favorite of maybe thirty shots I managed to get that turned out well. It really shows his personality off because he loves to scream and is a trouble maker, which makes him feisty. He’s always picking on the other birds and getting into things he shouldn’t. I think a person that doesn’t know him could tell these things by this photograph.

                  

I was there shooting for about two hours, waiting patiently for the birds to pose for me or do something cute and this shot made the wait worth it. When I shoot pets, there is no such thing as wasted time.

                  

When I edited the shot in post, I brightened the colors up just a bit by bringing the whites up and added contrast by bring the blacks up just a little. I didn’t need to play with the saturation at all because it was already so colorful.