White Fronted Bee Eaters

[Martin Dunn]

Merops b. bullockoides



One of the highlights of a visit to Selous is a boat trip on the Rufiji River and one of the highlights of the boat trip is the colony of White Fronted Bee Eaters.

Nikon D300s
Sigma 120mm-400mm lens @165mm
1/1000s
f5
ISO400

Hand Held from boat.

This image has been substantially cropped from the original to remove the tail of a bird above and the top of the head of a bird below and quite a lot more cliff face.
Due to the extensive cropping I kept the image size a bit smaller than usual.

RAW conversion in Nikon Capture NX: exposure comp -0.3, contrast 10%
Cropped in Photoshop Elements

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Martin,
I like the head angle for both and colors, you did really well with the poses.

But the image is lacking in critical detail due to cropping. Presenting it at such a small size will not help, I am looking on a 30" and at 766pixels it just looks like an icon. Th the BG is too much in focus and thus distracting IMO. you should have zoomed all the way in to get the right composition in camera, this would have avoided cropping and significant loss of detail and also would have given you much shallower DOF to help deal with that busy BG.

TFS

[gail bisson]

Hi Martin,
Seeing these little beauties makes me long for another trip to Africa.
I have to agree with Arash on some points. I don't find the IQ particularly compromised on my 21" monitor, but do find the BG a bit overpowering.
This would have rocked as a vertical if you had been much closer. It would also have helped blur the BG as well and eliminate the burrows to be closer.
Gail

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Martin, well timed to have captured symmetrical poses of the two BE's, as they dont keep still for a second when they are out and about feeding. Colours are spot on, and their nests in the BG show their enviroment nicely. Good suggestion from Gail to try a vertical. When I have an opportunity that the subjects are plenty, and of course plenty of time I get the main shots that will count, and then play with all sorts of 'different' shots and comps. You may not see them for a while.

[hennieloots]

Hi Martin - Great capture with the symmetrical pose! The rich colors look great. I'm sure a clean background would look even more pleasing, I'm sure a clean background would look even more pleasing, but the nesting holes don't bother me much & I like that the subject are composed between hole and not over them.
TFS
Hennie

[Martin Dunn]

Here's a repost - this is about 30% of the original frame.
cropped from horizontal.
other techs as before