The rest of the set can be seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14884524@N ... 112440622/
My wife and I were out working on the hedges, which had gotten rather out of hand. I was sawing off a stubborn branch while she was trimming back a hedge that was threating to overshadow her Iris. Suddenly my wife shouts \"Oh no!\". I said, \"wasps?\" She answered \"It's a nest!\". Well, we had dealt with wasps in the hedges before. So I put down the saw and said, \"Don't worry, I'll deal with the wasps. And my wife, still horrified said, \"No, its a BIRD nest!\"
Turns out a pair of doves had made their nest in our hedge. We hadn't noticed any unusual bird activity, and the nest was hidden deep inside the bush, so we had no idea it was there. My wife was terrified that she had trimmed the poor babies' tails off. But, no fear. It was a close shave, she had trimmed right up to the edge of the nest, but the babies were fine. They just sat there as if having their home exposed by an electric trimmer happened to them every day.
I figured I was a perfect opportunity to take some pictures. The nest was now only an inch or so inside the hedge and if the babies had handled the giant trimmers of doom, they certainly weren't going to be disturbed by a few snapshots from my new fz28.
If you look through the entire set, you'll see that mama came back to the babies shortly and they are still growing in our front yard quite contented.
The first photo was over saturated with green, so I used Gimp to tone down the green a bit. Hopefully I didn't twist it too far towards magenta. Also, I had a nasty time trying to figure out how to properly expose a picture where the subject is in shadow with dapples of bright sunshine. I ended up holding a bucket lid between the babies and the sun so they were more completely in shadow to minimize the effect.
I'm still new at the photography game, so any advice on how to improve my picture taking/processing would be much appreciated.
