Ground Hornbill

[Ken Watkins]

Massive crop around 15% of image, taken in Kwando concession, Northern Botswana 5th July 2009

EOS 1D MkIII

500mm F4 IS hand-held from open game viewing vehicle.

F5.6, ISO 400, 1/2500, EV -0.25

[Stu Bowie]

Ken, good job on the exposure, and I like how the shadow of the eye lashes falls on the eye. These guys always have a lot of detail to study when looking at them. Lovely smooth BG.

[Chris Martinez]

Love those eyelashes!!!:D I wonder if you could do a little more sharpening. The exposure looks pretty spot on and I like the framing.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Massive crop alright! Although looking acceptable as posted (agree it needs a bit more sharpening for the fine detail), the image is on the verge of showing crop strain. With this amount of cropping I'd be inclined to recrop with more of the body showing. Still visually pleasing though.

[Pieter de Waal]

Hi Ken,

Unique stretched head position Ken not seen this before. Considering the crop and being hand held the detail in the reds and beak have held up well. Love the gap in the closed beak.TFS.

[Ken Watkins]

Thanks to everybody for your comments and suggestions.

With hindsight I agree that the crop is too severe and the JPEG has insufficient sharpening.

The original image has what can only be descrided as an "interfering" bush, just after passing us the hornbill turned away:(

I will look at an alternative crop.