Double-banded Courser

[Glenn Pure]

172791
Taken in late afternoon light near the Etosha Pan in Etosha National Park, Namibia. Not much I can do about the environment this bird lives in and I consider myself lucky getting this shot in nice light as these birds scuttle along the ground at speed. I have darkened and flattened contrast on the background a bit and lifted shadows and midtone contrast on the bird to provide some 'pop' and separation. This is from a horizontal frame and probably about a third of the frame area.

Thanks for taking a lot and any comments you may wish to share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/1000 sec, f7.1, ISO 500. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR applied to bird and stronger to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur: 0.4 pixels at 50%) after final size reduction.

[Bill Dix]

Interesting looking bird in a nice pose. His colors really match his environment. Nice and sharp. Only wish you could have gotten the light more behind you, but it doesn't always work that way.

[Glenn Pure]

Thanks for taking the time to comment, Bill.


Only wish you could have gotten the light more behind you, but it doesn't always work that way.

I actually liked the light a lot in this one but note it won't appeal to all tastes. I think it helps define the bird better than if the light had been behind me. I am a bit of a sucker for backlighting and side lighting though.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Beautiful bird, nicely shown in it's habitat. The colors do match the surroundings. The image appears sharp and nicely processed. Being a follower of Artie Morris I am with Bill in preferring front lighting, just a personal bias that has worked well even in really bright light. Thank you for sharing, Glenn.

[Abhijit Deshpande]

Very nice

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Like this capture in the birds habitat, Glenn. I can imagine from your description of the bird quickly moving around, made it difficult to get the sun at your back. I think you've done a good job on getting a nice quality of light, both on the bird and the surrounding environment.

Geoffrey




https://500px.com/geoffreymontagu (https://500px.com/geoffreymontagu)