White Throated Bee-eater

[Ken Watkins]

Taken from a boat on the Lunga River, Kafue NP, Zambia

EOS1D MkII

100-400mm IS at 400mm

F6.3, 1/500, ISO 400

[Daniel Cadieux]

You had some nice light, a great subject, and a bonus insect in the bill (I like it's placement at the very tip of the bill). Too bad the face is angled away, and the BG is rather distracting...especially the branches running through the bill and face.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Very nice light and moment captured. I agree regarding the angle, could you have moved to your left? The branches in the BG are a bit distracting.

[Jim Poor]

I find the warm light a bit too strong. To me, it looks like a reddish haze that causes a real muddy look.

I eliminated the red cast on a separate layer which looked really good to me, but I reduced the opacity to about 80% to let a little of the warmth shine through. Then I used Select>Color Range> Mid-Tones to select some of the background branches for a bit of blurring and darkening. I had to use a mask to keep the effect off the bird.

Hope this helps.
Jim

[Arthur Morris]

Daniel stole my critique (thank you sir) and Jim's re-post is an improvement. The bird is great, the dragonfly better, but with the poor head angle and the distracting background this one does not work for me.