What’s wrong with this picture?

There are two major flaws that are not hard to identify in this shot of a black-naped oriole I photographed in an aviary at the Bird Park on the island of Bali: 1) the aluminum feeding station bowl at the bottom left and 2) the steel rebar on which the oriole is perched. The rust colored rebar almost simulates a tree branch; nevertheless, it is undesirable because it doesn’t look natural.

A minor flaw is the red bird band on the leg. All the captive birds I’ve ever seen have been banded, and this is one of the first things I do -- clone the band out.

To eliminate the aluminum bowl, I used the leaves from the top of the frame and the upper right. This worked out very well as you can see in the picture on the next page. I also covered up all the rebar except the metal portion on

which the bird is perched.

To turn the rebar perch into a branch took a little finesse. When I photographed the oriole, I realized the metal had to be replaced with a natural branch. Therefore, I photographed several branches that made good candidates.

In Photoshop, I then made a precise selection of the rebar using the pen tool. Not included in the selection was the bird’s foot. I then opened one of the pictures of a branch, selected it, and copied that to the clipboard (Edit > copy). I pasted that (Edit > paste special > paste into) into the shot of the oriole within the seletion of rebar and rotated it (Edit > transform > rotate) to the correct angle that matched the angle of the rebar.

I then used the move tool to move the branch over the rebar, and resized it (Edit > transform > scale) to fit perfectly.

Finally, I used the burn tool to darken the new perch so all of the attention remained on the beautiful oriole. §