
The rainforest of Lamington Nat’l Park around O’Reilly’s is teaming with bird life this time of year. The vast majority are incredibly colorful, have crazy calls and do everything in a big way. One notable exception is the Grey Shrike-Thrush. While “common” you are lucky to see one during a twenty-four hour period and even more lucky to get one in the viewfinder. With that said, on everyone of my visits to O’Reilly’s I’ve have the opportunity to photograph one and long enough to get the “Say What?” cock of the head. I’m not sure if it’s trying to hear better, see around me, watching a predator overhead or what, but rotating their head until it looks like it’s going to pop off seems to be common. Knowing this was coming at some point, I wanted the rest of the frame to be “light and whimsical” to support that look. I didn’t want the “dark” rainforest like I had previously. I dialed in +0.03 exp comp into the Z 9 for the ambient light and used the Profoto A10 bringing up the value of the Shrike-Thrush. The end result just makes me smile so in the future when back in MT, I can look at the photo and know it’s saying, “Say What?”