Male Green Kingfisher

[Jeannean Ryman]

While photographing the Green Heron I posted the other day, this male Green Kingfisher flew to this unfortunate perch just a few feet from where I was partially hidden by some cat-tails. These are much smaller than the Belted or Ringed Kingfishers, so to get one filling the frame doesn't happen that often (for me), so despite the ugly perch, I was pretty happy to get one so close. Taken early morning with D7000/500mm f/4-P, 1.6x TC @ 1/640, f/5.6, ISO 800. As always, comments and suggestions are most welcome and appreciated.

[Raymond Lee]

Great shot! Fantastic details and nicely exposed! I also wish it was a better perch too.

[Karl Egressy]

Striking image, Jeannean. Love the pose and the beautiful smooth background. The only Kingfisher from ABA I haven't seen yet.

[Randy Stout]

Jeannean:

Excellent look back pose, pleasant bg, nice catchlight.

The whites on the ruff of the neck aren't showing much detail, might be able to tease out a bit more there.

You might lessen the impact of the perch by cropping 20-30% off the bottom with balancing crop on top, and lower the luminosity a bit so it recedes a bit more visually.

Cheers

Randy

[Jeannean Ryman]

Thanks for the suggestion Randy. I tried Color Effects Pro Detail Extractor on the white. Still not much there even when I look at 300%. Not quite sure how to lower the luminosity of the perch, so when I resized for web sharpening, I masked out the perch so it wouldn't receive any sharpening (background is always masked out). Is this any better?

[vishaljadhav]

The repost looks more pleasing to the eye for sure and i liked the OP too
the exposure is superb and the BG is something i would like to carry with me any place i go
Look back pose looks nice and i love the details on the darks

[gary ellwein]

Jeannean, good feather detail in darks, midtones and most of the whites. Love the bg and head angle. For me, the repost feels tight. To my eye, the neck feathers in the repost appear a bit muddy with no increase in detail.

[Satish Ranadive]

Magnificent image with beautiful look back pose.Lovely colors,nice details and composition.
Tack sharp, very nice eye contact and I like the reflection in the eye.Re post looks better.

Regards,
Satish.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Jeannean, This male is very similar to our giant kingfisher in all aspects except ours doesnt have the green sheen as shown up in your image. The rufous chest for the male, and rufous belly for the female. Great lookback pose, sharp, and against a lovely smooth BG. With regards to your repost, coming up from the bottom has helped a lot to reduce the length of the 'unnatural' perch, but by trying to bring out more detail in those whites on the neck, it now looks a touch 'grey' on my screen. I feel your OP looks better in that area, even though the detail is not quite there. Ive found on my Pied Kingfiaher images, if the angle of light falls on an area of white and gets too hot, I normally cant recover them with all the methods available.

[Randy Stout]

Jeannean:

Yes, the repost helps with the effect of the perch, whites have now gone a bit gray, so somewhere in between on that point. Stuart has much more experience on kingfishers than I do, so I appreciate his comments on the whites and light angle.

I have done a bit of crop, and lowered both the exposure and contrast on the perch. Luminosity just refers to the brightness of the area ( at least as I am using the term. Lots of mathematical considerations in astronomy and other areas, which I don't fully understand)

Cheers

Randy

[Jeannean Ryman]

Thank you all for the very helpful comments and for the repost Randy. I very much appreciate it. Stuart, I had to look up a Giant Kingfisher since I'm not familiar with them. They do look similar (although the Green is about 10 inches smaller). I'll keep trying and work with a better light angle (hopefully!). This one was far from ideal as far as my position to the bird/light was.