A couple from Spicers Gap

[wigz]

I drove up to Spicers Gap today hoping for some species I don't already have. Unfortunately there were very few birds showing themselves. I did see a few but most weren't in the open long enough to photograph. I did get these.

1. Lewin's Honeyeater after a quick dip. 1/250 f/5.6 ISO 4500


2. Grey Fantail. 1/320 f/5.6 ISO 320


3. Grey Fantail. I blurred the background in post in this one. 1/500 f/5.6 ISO 1000

[Ozzie_Traveller]

G'day Alan

All three look good to me matey - so I think that your meander up the hill was a success

Phil

[wigz]

Thanks Phil. Not a waste but hardly a success. I was anticipating a lot more.

[HansE]

Nice addition to the collection. #1 looks a bit peeved you are distracting him from his dinner.

[wigz]

Thanks Hans. Nice idea. I can’t make out what the bugs are, but the birds weren’t interested in them, just the pool of water below.

[Isac]

Another well presented set Alan. I'd (and I'm sure many others) would be happy to get these shots. Good framing. What did yo do to blur the BG in #3?

[wigz]

Selected the bird and branch, copied it to a new layer, used content-aware fill to replace the bird and branch with background, qaussian blur then add noise.

This seems to work well where only one degree of blur is required.

[Isac]

Cheers Alan. As I would do BUT I would use a mask instead of copying the selection to a new layer, as once the selection is made to a copy layer it's very difficult to refine the edges, whereas with the mask it's easy to refine the edges. You can also use tilt shift blur instead of gaussian for a realistic DOF. All good thanks for sharing.