Bateleur

Taken 9th March 2008, Kwando concession Botswana
EOS 1D MkIII
500m F4 hand held
ISO 800
1/5000 at F8

Fantastic detail, whish the head werer turned more.

Great capture Ken,
The details on colors on your bird are sharp. I like the pleasing background and the perch...:) would have liked to have seen the bird's head turn more towards you...:)

P.S. In addition Ken; you might want to consider cloning out the vertical branch on the lower right hand side of your frame...:D

This is one of my favorite subjects in Africa! The colors and tones in the image are fantastic, the sharpness is good also. The body has a strange shape maybe due to the angle Inclination? Agree with Gus of the small section of the perch.


Robert

Beautiful bird and we had the opportunity to see it once on our last visit to Kenya. The details are excellent as well as the color. I like the coquette pose but do agree about possibly removing the one branch on the right. Lovely capture and thanks for sharing.

Very nice image as everyone has already said the color are sweet.

I agree about the branch on the right hand side, I tried cloning but I could not get a finish to the stump that would be leftover.
I thought the pose made it look slightly shy , I have some full face shots from the same sighting but prefer this one.
Thanks for the positive feedback.

Wish for more bill separation from the wing shoulder. Nice exposure and detail. At 1/5000 sec for shutter, you could have backed off to 1/1250th (still fast enough to be very sharp handheld) and dropped your iso down to iso 200 and achieved the same exposure, but with less noise, not that there is much here at iso 800. Just a thought for the future. Cheers !