This is my first post! This is a Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis) hovering over a lake near my home in India. Shot hand-held with a Canon 100-400L on a 7D.
Manual mode, AI servo focus. 1/2000th sec @ f/5.6, ISO 640. Post processing in CS6 : cropping, resizing, levels, sharpening on the bird and noise reduction on the background using Neat Image.
Hi Akshay- Big welcome to BPN. What a great bird to show off! It looks like you have good sharpness particularly where it counts around the eye and head, which is where your eye is drawn. I like the neutral background and the composition with more negative space below the bird than above- this works because of the direction of gaze of the bird and the implied action.
The eye and head are such an important parts of a bird portrait and this is where you can improve your image. You need to bring out more detail there by lightening the face and bill. If you shot raw you should do this at the raw development stage with an Adjustment brush (assuming Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw, or Lightroom). You could also "dodge" the area in post-processing.
Look forward to seeing more from you and feel free to comment on images posted by others.
Greetings. Great first post. I particularly like the moment you caught - looks ready to strike, good head and wing positions. John makes a good suggestion about lightening the face/bill... Perhaps, the levels adjustment you used darkened the face a bit since it looks to be where levels would put the black point.
What a great first post, much better that mine Great advice above especially the light in eye area. As I always say, we do not shoot the subject we shoot the light. A well lit eye does wonders for a bird photograph and would improve this picture considerably. Consider flash and/or bringing out more detail in the eye area via post processing (1). Crop the bottom 1/3 of the frame (light area) it does nothing for the picture and distracts the eye. Thanks for posting and please keep em coming.
(1) "The Art of Bird Photography" and "Digital Basics" are important reading material and great reference material for nature photograph - consider purchasing.
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 05-29-2013 at 05:47 PM.
Pied Kingfisher hovering over a lake
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