Into the Shadows

The summer sun came out after a cloudy morning and things began to heat up. This cockatoo found a nice cool spot in the dappled shade with a light breeze to keep cool. Great for the cockatoo but a challenge to photograph.

   

On automatic the light meter, has correctly exposed the sky but left the bird and foliage very dark and essentially in silhouette. Whereas a spot metering on the dappled shadows on the cockatoos white feathers as caused the sky to be blown out. So I took a bracketed exposure set, recording both RAW and jpeg versions. Then I selected the best looking exposure and took the RAW file into Lightroom and rather than adjust the whole image I used the adjustment brush in the development module to just lighten the shadows and increase the clarity of the cockatoo and branch. Not quiet dodge & burn but similar results.