A Meadowlark On A Fence Post

I've been having a lot of fun with photo editing lately. I also have been discovering a few new animals in my adventures. The bird I have for you today is a meadowlark. It's my very first one. I've been seeing them around, with their flash of yellow,but I never got pictures until now.

The pictures aren't very impressive, but you should see what they looked like before I used a few editing tricks on them. Wait, I'll show you one of them toward the end today.

The problem was that the Sun was almost directly behind the bird when I took the pictures. Bad lighting couldn't be helped, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to get a few pictures of a bird when it was presenting itself so well to me.

I think I did quite well considering the angle I took the pictures from, and the obstructed view I had. The bird was sitting on a fence post almost right behind a warning sign. I cropped the sign out of the picture and zoomed the bird in a lot closer so you could see it better.

Here's the original picture above. It's the same source as the first picture of the post. Go ahead and click on it to get a better look. You'll see that the bird is completely dark except for the yellow of its breast. Using a few different settings in Gimp, I was able to brighten up the picture, especially the bird, without losing any of the color. Take a look below for the improvement.

A pretty good improvement, right? I'm really beginning to like Gimp. Do a search for it. It's free! It takes some time to learn how to use it, but it's worth it. It's about as hard/easy as Photoshop, and just as powerful.

Oh, the sign! I almost forgot. Here's a picture showing what's on the sign. I had to edit this picture too just to make it at all viewable. It worked pretty good too.

This Danger sign tells of the bison (buffalo) that live beyond the fence. The fence is electrified so I didn't get too close. There is a way in, which I took, but I only went to the viewing area. You can't usually see any bison because this place is huge and the bison run free here. The bison could be miles away at any time. There was evidence that they've visited though.

I had extra pictures to share this time. I hope it wasn't too many. Next time I'll share some of the scenery from here. And I'll share something not so fun that happened to me while I was at this place.