Pied Kingfisher

[Glenn Pure]

172849
Here's another one from my trip to Africa in May. This one from the Okavango Delta in Botswana. I noticed this bird regularly used a reed not far from the jetty at the lodge so I took up position and waited for it to show up. Crop is maybe half the frame area with a bit off all sides.

Thank you for looking and any comments you may share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/1600 sec, f7.1, ISO 800. 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. Some selective tone adjustments on the bird mainly to bring up the shadows and control the whites. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur: 0.4 pixels at 50%) after final size reduction.

[Juan Tolentino]

Nice details pose and HA Glenn. If mine I’d probably remove the string under the perch. TFS.


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[Glenn Pure]

Thanks Juan, the 'string' is actually part of the reed.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Beautiful bird, nicely shown. Perch and background compliment. I like the background with enough detail to show the grasses yet out of focus enough not to distract. Thank you for sharing, Glenn.

[William Dickson]

Love the detail on the KF. The BG shows the bird real well. I would maybe dodge the eye area, and the bill a wee bit. Nice natural looking image Glenn. Well done.

Will

[Bill Dix]

Very nice pose, and lovely background. Yes, maybe just a tad of brightening around the face might help.

[Glenn Pure]

Thanks Juan, Will, Joe and Bill. I did work on the shadows around the eye to lift this area but didn't want it to look too unnatural. Maybe I should revisit.

[arash_hazeghi]

Very appealing photo of the KF in habitat, I'd clone out the thinner branch under the main perch, wish the sun was behind your neck

TFS

[gail bisson]

I love these KF's.
Too bad the KF did not turn his head ever so slightly to his right so that the sun lit up his face a bit more.
Still a very nicely processed image.
I like the bit of wavy reed under the bird. Gives some nice lines.
I wonder if you have thought of doing a pano and including the flowered end of the reed? Might look nice,
Gail

[Glenn Pure]

Thanks Arash and Gail for your views. Agree a bit more light on the head and bill would have been nice but I usually avoid light directly behind me. I know it is popular and recommended by many but I think it destroys a lot of form and hides a lot of detail as the shadowing from side lighting disappears. IMHO, better to have that shadowing and handle it in processing than get rid of it. (But my favourite is soft light). As for the full flower head, it's not in the frame. These are quite long and it would have become a 'small in the frame' shot if I'd zoomed back and recomposed to include it - but agree it could have made quite a nice image.