Southern Carmine Bea-eater

[Per-Gunnar Ostby]

One of my faves from my last trip to Africa

Whilst in the South Lunagwa, Zambia I spent some time trying to photograph African Skimmers in the last light of the day, when suddenly a small flock of Southern Carmine Bea-eaters decided to come in for a bath.

Given their quirky flight patterns it was tremendously difficult to get one sharp with my 600. This was definitely the best one.

1Ds Mk3
600 f4 with 1.4 converter
1/500s at f5.6
ISO 400

Per-Gunnar
www.pgoimages.com (http://www.pgoimages.com)

[Art Kornienko]

The lighting and reflection are supberb, I can appreciate the difficulty in getting the shot and congratulate you.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great pose, and reflection. I also like the wing touching the water. I might crop a bit tighter, it's hard to say more about the image because the bird is so small in the frame. Could you post the techs?

[Per-Gunnar Ostby]

Axel,

I could crop a bit tighter but it is already cropped in a decent amount. The dimensions are currently 4102 by 2051

What do you mean by 'the techs'?

[Doug Brown]

I like the wing dragging in the water, but the bird appears a little lost in the frame. A tighter crop would emphasize the bird more; the large amount of water doesn't add anything to the image.

Axel is talking about your camera settings, but I see you've already included them.

[Maxis Gamez]

Interesting image. The crop works for me because the bird is sooo small in the frame that the only way to make it work is to place it in the perfect place and I think you did.

[Per-Gunnar Ostby]

OK - here is one which is cropped a bit more (the original is now just shy of 3000 pixels wide).

[Maxis Gamez]

Re-post is much powerful. Excellent crop!

[Ramon M. Casares]

What great moment captured, love it, Repost works a little more IMO. Congratualitons!

[Arthur Morris]

Hey P-G, Good to see you here. I saw this in New Mexico at the critique. Loved it then, love it now. Super sharp even with the big crop, killer reflection, wing dragging in the steel-gray water, and a nice pano crop. The repost is the better of the two.

[Robert O'Toole]

i really like the repost PG. This sp is one of my favorites.

Is this before the bird dipped for a drink?

This is the type of situation that would drive me mad when I had my 1DS. It makes you wish you had a 1.6x body on the lens!

Robert

[Per-Gunnar Ostby]

Thanks Robert,

It actually dipped for a bath! But didn't get that one in focus :(

a 1.6 would definitely get closer but for some of the mammals too close...

If I had used the 1D mk3 would have been a little further out due to the pixel count of the 1Dd

[Doug Brown]

One thing that will help with your image presentation is to take advantage of the size limit of 200 KB; you are posting very small file sizes.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey P-G,
Another vote for the re-post......very nice overall. I often prefer images with tighter crops.........but this one works very well for me. Great placement in the frame!

[Juan Aragonés]

I like this image a lot instead of the fact that the bird is really small in the frame. Here I think that the most important elements in the image are the action, light, pose, calm water and composition and all those elements are really working here. Outstanding image!

[Per-Gunnar Ostby]

Thanks for the great comments guys

[Dan O'Leary]

Hey there, Per. Good to see you here posting. I prefer the tighter crop on this great image - very dynamic.