Lesser Ground-Cuckoo

[Chris Jimenez]

Hi All,

I was walking along a patch of dry forest near Santa Rosa National Park in Costa Rica, when I hear the call of this Cuckoo. After I manage to spot it, I droped to the ground and started to drag myself for about 15 meters of many branches and tree leafs to try to get a closer shot at eye level.

Luckily the bird perched on a small log for about 1 minute when I was close. This picture came out


http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5446/6949009090_ef544184d9_b.jpg

Exif where

ISO 640, f/6.3, 1/200 sec, Canon 100/400mm, Canon 7d, Hand hold

Thanks for looking !

[Richard Unsworth]

Great find Chris and very well done getting close
well exposed but soft and a little blurred on head, try some more sharpening on head
Also if you have canvas to the right I would recrop so bird is not centred ie from left, looking right into space.
Also a bit tight top and bottom. Like this (hope you dont mind - your image deleted from my machine)

Anyways its a great bird to have; I have never seen one before.
keepthem coming
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[Chris Jimenez]

Thanks for your comments Richard, The image seems to lose some sharpening when I move it to flickr. Adding a new one with some more sharpenning.

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5446/6949009090_4360183f5e_b.jpg

I dont have any more canvas, actually the image has not been crop, its how it was compose in the camera.

[Richard Unsworth]

OK Chris that looks a little sharper.

Try moving to left focus spot; took me a while to get used to not centrering my images, and in the seconds you have with these forests birds is not easy
you can add canvas as I did ; plenty of good info on here as to how to do that. This one probably better as a aquare?
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[Chris Jimenez]

Thanks Richard,
Yes, I guess I could clone some more background out, but I personally dont like to mess with images that much.I prefer to stick to what it came out of the camera, even if its not that great of a composition, it kind of makes me improve on that aspect I guess.
But you are totally right, it will be better if the bird was one the left.
Thanks

[Richard Unsworth]

Exactly Chris; tbh this is one of the best LGC shots around, like many of these birds the current pics are not good
they are **** hard to see let alone capture as you have!

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[Randy Stout]

Chris:

Striking bird, nice shooting angle. I would tone down some of the brightest high lights in the background, keep our attention on the bird.

I like the placement of the bird in frame as done by Richard, although it is now a bit too big in frame.

Cheers

Randy

[Chris Jimenez]

Thanks for your comments,
I went ahead and look for another picture in the set that was properly composed. In this one, I did manage to put it on the left when the bird was looking to the right. The same settings and still with no crop.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8142/7444684738_ac341d7dd0_b.jpg

I think it work better but I liked the pose on the other one better.
Thanks for your feedback.
Chris!