Respendent Quetzal

[Katie Rupp]

Costa Rica, on our way to the lodge: we were looking carefully for this beautiful bird and were all excited when Doug spotted it. Out of the bus, setting up tripods, moving into position, trying to get close, etc. I should have used a higher ISO and a bit less EC for a faster shutter speed...lesson learned, I hope. C&C encouraged and greatly appreciated.

Canon 1dm3; f5.6, 1/25; Av +2/3; ISO 400; no flash, 500f4 and 1.4x converter

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Oh wow a stunning image and beautifully composed. Love it Katie and my sincere congratulations. the whole composition is just over the top for me and I know they are not an easy one to see, capture and then to get the whole tail in one image. Awesome !!!!!!

[Stu Bowie]

Hey Katie, thats one fine looking species, and thats one of the longest tails Ive seen on a bird. Wonderful colour on the bird. Comp works for me, and you have done very well considering your slow ss. With the MK III, Im sure you could have pushed up the ISO.

[Keith Bauer]

Katie: This looks very nice. You did very well with that slow of a shutter speed. Love the composition. The light was low, but beautiful that day. Nicely captured

[wendell westfall]

Katie, everything exotic about this image; bird, color, background and perch. Most of us birders dream of a trip to Costa Rica.

[Katie Rupp]

Thank you, Judy, Stuart, Wendell and Keith!

[Bill Dix]

Hi Katie. Congratulations on capturing this amazing bird -- all of him including the whole tail. Well done! Maybe I'll get there next year.

[EdNguyen]

Wow! What a magnificent bird! Love the tail. Thanks for sharing, Katie.

Ed

[mikedewitt]

Nice job. You were fortunate to get the bird in a relatively open spot - not easy.

[Jim Crosswell]

A beautiful setting for this unique bird!

[Doug Brown]

Nicely captured Katie! You paid attention to the BG and avoided the sky entirely. We were fortunate to find a male Quetzal perched out in the open like that. I enjoyed watching and listening to the bird as much as I enjoyed photographing him!

[Kiran Poonacha]

What a beautiful bird this is.... loved the setting..

[Nicki Gwynn Jones]

Well done Katie, this is awesome - brings back happy memories :)

[Juan Aragonés]

I missed this one Katie. The perch is just fantastic and the quetzal is posing like a profesional model. I would prefer that the scarlet flanks of the bird were not covered by the litle plants growing in the top of the perch. Head turn and eye contact are very good and love to see the complete tail. I have to say that you did a very good job composig this one because extremely long taild birds, like this one, are not easy to compose. I think that the nice and big perch (it is like a small garden itself) helps a lot in this case.

[Greg Basco]

Katie, great job here with the composition and the sharpness. I don't know that raising the ISO would have helped that much as it looks plenty sharp to me but the tradeoff between higher noise and better shutter speed (via higher ISO) is certainly something to keep in mind here in Costa Rica.

In any case, my congrats on a nice image of this beautiful bird!

Cheers,
Greg Basco