Red-throated Bee-eater

[Ignacio Yufera]

Shot in the banks of the river Gambia, Senegal.

Canon 1D MkIII, Canon 800 f/5.6, 1/2500 @ f/6.3, ISO 400

[Randy Stout]

Ignacio:

Great tail display, vibrant colors, unique pose.
The eye appears a bit soft on my monitor.
Looks like a small sharpening halo around the end of the tail feathers.

Thanks for sharing, hope to see more!

Cheers
Randy

[Ofer Levy]

Beautiful light, colours and pose. Agree with Randy regarding the head being soft. The perch must go IMO...;)

[Jim Fenton]

Stupendous colors :)

The head looks sharp on my monitor?

Now...initially I would have agreed with Ofer BUT...I got rid of the perch in PS and the bird sort of looks our of sorts without knowing from where it came with this pose IMHO...so I like it as is :)

[Ignacio Yufera]

Now...initially I would have agreed with Ofer BUT...I got rid of the perch in PS and the bird sort of looks our of sorts without knowing from where it came with this pose IMHO...so I like it as is :)

Thanks for taking the trouble Jim. I tried it myself and it does look awkward...

[Arthur Morris]

Ignacio, Thanks for posting this beauty. The bird is amazing, the perch, butt ugly.... I ran a 1 pixel Gaussian blur on the perch and sculpted it a bit. There was a pretty nasty halo all around. I eliminated a lot of it. The face is not quite as sharp as those amazing wings. Obviously a killer, killer pose. Lightened the mask and worked on the reds a bit for the repost.

[Arthur Morris]

Jeez, I wanted to take a tad off the bottom and the top but forgot... So here it is :)

[Jim Fenton]

I like what Artie did with the totally naturally but agreed to be "butt ugly perch" :)

To my eyes, it is better blurred rather than gone, less obtrusive than the original, yet it still provides a spring board for launch to explain the subjects posture.

[arash_hazeghi]

excellent dive pose, nice exposure, I like Artie's tighter repost. My only issue is that the critical focus point is on the tail leaving the head and beak slightly soft.

[Randy Stout]

Ignacio:

I think the perch must remain to explain the pose. Artie has improved it. I was struck by its proximity to the bird, and 'moved' it further away, to give more separation from the bird. I used Artie's repost as my starting point.
A very quick and dirty job, just to help visualize my thinking.

Interesting image with lots of options on how to tweak it.

Just another possibility for you.

Cheers

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

Well done Randy. I like what you did with the perch too.

[Ignacio Yufera]

Thanks Arthur and Randy. Actually I kind of like how strikingly indeed the bird is to the perch...

Since we're at it, we might as well put an altogether new perch? Interesting to think about how far you can go when altering an original image without it being considered "manipulated"...

As Randy says, lots of possibilities; I wonder where's the threshold of what a publisher/ mag/ agency would consider acceptable? I just posted a thread on the Workflow forum regarding this.

Thanks again,

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Arthur and Randy. Actually I kind of like how strikingly indeed the bird is to the perch... Since we're at it, we might as well put an altogether new perch? Interesting to think about how far you can go when altering an original image without it being considered "manipulated"... As Randy says, lots of possibilities; I wonder where's the threshold of what a publisher/ mag/ agency would consider acceptable? I just posted a thread on the Workflow forum regarding this. Thanks again,

Hi Ignacio, You are welcome. I notice that you used the word manipulated in quotes... There is no hard and fast definition that I know of as far as photographic "manipulation." When you adjust color and contrast we would be manipulating the image to some. I always try to be faithful to the natural history of the image, in this case, a bird jumping off a perch.

Once a different perch is added I would feel that you have now created a photographic illustration....

Best policy is to do what only works for you while letting others know what you have done. And that includes letting editors know in the image caption or otherwise.

[Haim Ziv]

Fascinating picture!!