Curious Kite

[Aditya Shankar]

Hi All.. made this image sunday morning.. a very cloudy morning & this cute birdie was fishing early morning and landed by the river bed with his catch.. me and my frnd Adi were running behind a kingfisher when we spotted this..we were already out of the car by then so I decided to give him a chase.. had to get close slowly.. and then on all fours thru the wet mud and weeds. And then after a bit of a belly crawl.. got close to him.. and spent a good deal of time with him before 4 more kites came & chased him away from his catch.. meanwhile he was also perched here n struck a few poses..

I was a wet and muddy mess by the end of it but equally happy !! :-) i liked the graded BG and left more space on the left hand side of the image.. :-)


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3419/3903078187_208224d0b3_o.jpg


Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: Canon 100-400 IS L
Exposure: 1/160
Aperture: f/8.0
Focal Length: 400 mm
Exposure: +0.65
ISO Speed: 400


C & C welcome.. thanks..

Adiii

[Lorant Voros]

Hello Aditya,

Sounds like you had a good adventure. I like the bird and the pose. It is really looking at you. I find the water/land line a bit distracting going through the head. I would also go for a bit tighter crop.

[Michael Zajac]

Really nice shot here. I'm not crazy about the line that crosses through it's head. I like the head on stare.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Your stalking methods and perseverance have paid off with a good image of this raptor. Unfortunately the line is crossing the bird at a bad spot. Would you have been able to go down lower to get the line to cross lower on the body instead, or maybe slowly raise yourself to get an almost all-blue BG? Anyhow, great expression you managed to get - this guy certainly knew where you were!! :-)

[Harshad Barve]

Your stalking methods and perseverance have paid off with a good image of this raptor. Unfortunately the line is crossing the bird at a bad spot. Would you have been able to go down lower to get the line to cross lower on the body instead, or maybe slowly raise yourself to get an almost all-blue BG? Anyhow, great expression you managed to get - this guy certainly knew where you were!! :-)

Ditto Daniel here
Clear blue BG would have made this shot grand one ,
BTW great expressive picture
TFS

[Dave Barnes]

What a pity the BG line is not great as the bird has got great detail and is so well captured. In this case I would be tempted to clone out the green and replace with blue.

[Kiran Poonacha]

Nice eye contact and setting AS, try some rotation the get the lOOF BG line parallel to the frame..

[Aditya Shankar]

Thanks guys..

@Lorant: Yeah mate,it was a mini-adventure.. :D am glad you like the stare..

Thank you Micheal. I like it that you aren't crazy about the line..;):p. .. kidding...

Hi Daniel.. I couldn't get any lower coz I was already lying on the ground and had to hold the lens a bit higher than the grass on the ground... I could have tried it i guess.. but he might have taken off too...next time!! I wanted to get a bit more closer since was pretty comfortable with me.. but that's when 4 more came down swwoping for the fish he had left behind roght over my head chasing this fellow away..

Thanks Dave & Harshad.

@Kiran: Guruuuu .. thanks a lot . aligning the lakebed parallely really improves the image a lot... Infact me & the other Adithya were talking about kites while driving to TG halli that day.. He was telling me about you spotting a lot of activity over there.. thanks a lot :-) :)