Hi everyone , the reason I produced this short blog was because there were many photographer friends that had asked whether the cage bars captured when I photographed the Philippines Eagle at Jurong Bird Park , Singapore could be removed EASILY ! The important word here was easily ha ha !
Well the answer is YES , now before I share a short video of how I did it , let me first put the photography aspect of the Philippines Eagle in perspective first.
BACKGROUND INFO
The Philippine Eagle was in this large caged aviary which was probably 2 floors high or slightly higher. I photographed the Eagle which was perched at the highest level at about 10am (after the rain stopped). I was about 15 - 20 feet away from the cage and could NOT get any closer.
The equipment I used was the following:
- Nikon Z 6
- Nikkor 500mm f/5.6 PF + Nikkor TC-14EIII - this gave me an effective focal length of 700mm
- Hand-Held
My EXIF settings were as follows :
- ISO1250
- 1/400s
- f8.0
WORKFLOW VIDEO
So here is a short screen capture video which I captured using Quicktime as I used Photoshop to post process the image file. It's a silent video of course !
You can see how the original capture of the eagle looked like , pretty horrendous if you ask me.
NOTE : there are MANY ways to remove the cage bars captured , so I am sharing just ONE of the techniques that I use which included how I prepared the file before using the BURN tool to "hide" the bars. I also showed a way how I remove the Bluish tint on the Eagle's face.
Sharing the FINAL VERSION of the image , I hope you like it. I tweaked the overall contrast a little more & cropped to the final composition using my cropping workflow.
REST OF THE PHILIPPINE EAGLE HIGHLIGHTS (from a single photography session)
This is ONE beautiful raptor ! Enjoy the following images.
Well , I hoped you liked this sharing & found it useful.
Hopefully the video gave you an idea of what could be done AND now that you know it is possible , GO photograph this lovely bird before they go home to the Philippines.
Till the next blog , Happy Shooting.
Cheers,
Andrew