Preen ev'ry feather
Clean high and low
Follow ev'ry pathway
Till they start to glow.

For all you "Sound of Music" fans.

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Tags:   Purple-naped Lory Lorius domicella Wings of Australasia San Diego Zoo ColorPhotoAward GoldDragon

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He was flicking his tongue like a crazy person the whole time I was shooting him and I felt sorry for him because I thought it was a nervous behavior, sort of like pacing or repetitive flight patterns. When I looked at this shot, though, I saw that there was something in his mouth, which was probably a piece of food, but it looks like a steel ball and reminds me of Humphrey Bogart's character in The Caine Mutiny, who kept rolling a couple of steel balls around in his hand.

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Tags:   Wings of Australasia San Diego Zoo AvianExcellence mywinners

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I have two third-party Photoshop plug-ins for extracting the backgrounds, but haven't posted this shot, in the past because neither of them worked well enough on it. I just found out, though, that Photoshop CS5 has a built-in tool that works better than either of my third-party tools. It is the Quick-Select tool, which I used with the Refine Edge button to make really nice selections and even to produce layers, so the I could easily further refine the edge.

I decided to use the color of the background in Flickr's new interface for the background on this image, rather than solid black, which turned out to be rather problematic, due to Flicr's changing the colors when you post images. After a bunch or trial and errors, though, I finally came up with the color that works for me, which is RGB (333333), in case you're interested. [Update] - Since fixing my Firefox settings, I've gone back and modified the background in this shot, again. My background color is now RGB(202020).

Look what I found when I Googled, "Wings of Australasia", which is what the Zoo used to call the exhibit where I shot this, hence my naming of the set that I created: en.flickeflu.com/set/72157607756389930/1. I don't know how it got there, but it looks pretty nice, so I'm not complaining.

Tags:   Birds Silver-eared Mesia Leiothrix argentauris Wings of Astralasia San Diego Zoo Photoshop CS5 FlickrsPortal NaturesElegantShots NGC mywinners

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Happy Bokeh Wednesday!

Blyth's Tragopan. For my friend Denise, who likes a narrow depth of field. Normally, I prefer a wider DOF, but I had to go narrow on this one and focus manually, because I was shooting through cage wire. I'm still amazed that cameras can render wire completely invisible.

[Edit] When I posted this, I didn't know today was Denise's birthday. We must have some sort of mental communication or something. Happy Birthday, Denise!

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Tags:   Blyth's Tragopan Grayed-bellied Tragopan Tragopan blythii Pheasant Wings of Australasia San Diego Zoo NaturesFinest platinumphoto BlueRibbonWinner The Perfect Photographer TheUnforgettablePictures AnAwesomeShot AvianExcellence VosPlusBellesPhotos The wonderful world of birds

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You're So Vain!

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Tags:   Purple-naped Lory Lorius domicella Wings of Aurtralasia San Diego Zoo mywinners

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