Ecuador Kingfisher

[ChasMcRae]

Green-and-Rufous Kingfisher shot from boat in Amazon section of Ecuador( Larger edition of the Pygmy Kingfisher). I liked the snag. Background was dappled light through heavy foliage along small dark stream.

Chas.McRae

Camera Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark II
Firmware: Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows
Date/Time: 2007:02:13 04:39:21
Shutter speed: 1/40 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure mode: Av
Exposure compensation: -1/3
Flash: On
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 400
Focal length: 600mm
Image size: 800 x 566
Rotation: none
Color space: sRGB
Color profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1

[Amy DeStefanis]

Wow - my first thought was "Is this real"? What amazing colors, and incredible creature! The colors in the background echo the bird's.

Brought a smile to my face! :)

I can't find anything I'd change, except MAYBE it's a little centered??? But I'm not sure where I'd crop.... I'll leave that for the real gurus.

Amy D.

[Steve Canuel]

Groovy Baby! Nice psychedilc BG colors. I like the subtle look he's giving you.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Great looking bird, I agree about is too centered, but that is easy to fix. The BG does not bother me at all.

[ChasMcRae]

He was centered but because I wanted to include all of snag he ended up like that. Anyone is welcome to recrop and post so I can get fresh ideas.

Chas.

[Simon Bennett]

Amazing colours!!!

[Juan Aragonés]

I see your idea of including the complete snag but the main subject is the KF and having such intense colors the attention of the observer is addressed to the bird and it is too much centered to my taste. If you want to keep the snag you have room enough to crop at the left and the bird will be less centered. I have seen this species and it looks to me a bit oversaturated, maybe I am wrong, let´s here what others say. Other than that I like this image a lot, the BG has a great "unreal" quality and the colors and atmosphere of the BG compliments the bird very well. The light, eyecatch and pose are fantastic. Big congratulations for this beautiful capture!

[Raymond Barlow]

Hi Chas., beautiful image of an excellent bird, congrats... my croping suggestion (for my taste) would be some off the left, and some off the top, more on the right if you have it., also, maybe a little too much fill flash imo.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Hi Chas,

I have a different view. I know, I am against the majority opinion, but am putting across my views.
I like your shot. i like the composition and the colours.

People here don't like your image placement, as the kingfisher is not in ROT. In your image, the kingfisher is not at the centre. Rather, the eye of the kingfisher is on the upper thirds line, as per the rule of thirds. Most of the time, I like this placement. Body can be at the centre, but the point of focus, the eyes are not at the center. So it doesn't lead to a real static condition.

If you crop your image to place the kingfisher at the left according to the RoT, the image won't work. As the tail of the kingfisher points to a bring green out of focus areas. So your eyes will definitely be led to that OOF areas.

I cropped your image a little from the left and the top. Now, your image gets into a diagonal composition. The angled branch and kingfisher on top of it forms a nice triangle.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Greg Basco]

Chas, beautiful shot. It's not easy to shoot from a boat in the rainforest, and you did really well. I would have the bird on either the upper or lower left third so he's really looking into the frame. Love that BG!

Cheers,
Greg Basco

[Peregrine Craig Nash]

I looked at this and also thought wow what a colourful image. The only thing I might have done was to flip as below as I find it easier on the eye and cropped slightly.

[ChasMcRae]

Thanks for all the thoughts and re posts. Many ideas to consider and from such an international group.

I agree with the comment as you crop more and more the bright green spot at the tail begins to compete with the bird.

I actually like the flipped minimal increase crop pic. I am finding that cropping is very personal in the nether land of "too Tight" and "Too much Room". No one mentioned a vertical to include the snag, but the snag is almost too horizontal for that.

I did not saturate in PS ,but did give it some vibrance in RSP(defunct program bought by Adobe).

Chas.

[Raymond Barlow]

I like combination of Sabyasachi and Criags edition a lot, it seems to work to the eye better.

[Glenn Bartley]

Cool image. It looks a bit "flashy" which you could perhaps work on. I would also crop tighter.