Lunch is served

[Charlene Bacchioni]

Was lucky to capture such a beautiful bird with a gecko in its beak .the background is not great.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV,canon 600mm f4 ,f/7.1,ISO-500,1/300sec,flash , on bean bag out of car window.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Yeah, a bit of a shame about the BG. :(
But you have a gorgeous bird with an awesome prey item here. Nice colours and perhaps you could get some more detail out of the dark tones and remove the flash catchlight.
Well done :)

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Charlene, lovely pose from the KF showing off his Gecko meal. Colours look spot on, and I would take the time to select the BG and achieve more of a high key finish.

[Russ Norwood]

Stunning bird Charlene. I'd have jumped at a chance to capture the scene. I think your use of fill flash was a good decision and I agree about the background. But I also think it's slightly underexposed and perhaps a touch oversaturated. I was able to improve it significantly with a couple of simple adjustments in levels and saturation -- at least to my eye.

What species of bird is it and where did you photograph it?

Russ

[David Salem]

We can all see how much a nice BG can make an image. Not that this is horrible, just it would be a lot better with a colorful green or tan BG as you know. The pose with the Gecko in the mouth is awesome and I like that we can see its head well and the details look good also..
Looks a hare under exposed, probably due to shooting into the light BG.
Shots like this usually need to be overexposed by 1 to 1-1/3 stops at capture. Well done.

[Charlene Bacchioni]

Hi Russ ,I would to see the changes you made ,it would help me.it is taken in SA at KZN ,they are called African Pygmy smallest bird in SA ,I think it is only about 10cm big.

[Bill Dix]

Terrific shot, well captured especially considering how small this guy is. And he turned the gecko to just the right position for you. Great colors. I personally don't mind the BG, although I'm not too crazy about the perch.

[Russ Norwood]

Hi Russ ,I would to see the changes you made ,it would help me.it is taken in SA at KZN ,they are called African Pygmy smallest bird in SA ,I think it is only about 10cm big.

Here's an example Charlene, but you'll be able to do much better than this with the original file. When I wrote my first reply I just reduced the white point and gamma with a levels adjustment layer in Photoshop.

In this attachment I created a similar effect using Lightroom by increasing overall exposure by about half a stop, then selecting the background with the adjustment brush and automask so that I could increase the background exposure by an extra .38 stop.

As someone else here has mentioned, light backgrounds in scenes like this often confuse the camera's exposure meter. I nearly always add exposure compensation to compensate in situations like this one.

I envy your opportunities to photograph these and many other South African birds. They are very beautiful and very different than the species we have here.

Russ