Laughing Kookaburra

[Glenn Pure]

An iconic Australian bird - and an excuse for me to put in a plug for the inaugural Australian Bird Photographer of the Year competition that I'm heavily involved in organising with our not-for-profit bird advocacy organisation Birdlife Australia (there's also a post from me on Workshops, Lectures and Events forum here) The competition opened today. As for the photo, I took it a few weeks ago next to a reserve not far from home. This kookaburra was intensely staring at the ground below looking for its next meal. By the way, the 'Laughing' in the title is the apt common name of this bird - clearly not laughing in this shot. Vertical capture with a little off the top, bottom and right for this crop.

As always, thank you for looking and for any comments you are kind enough to share - and hope to see some BPNers entering any Australian bird shots you may have in the competition.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM Mk II at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/200 sec, f7.1, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 2.5, crop, lighting adjustments, reduced luminance NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to bird and stronger NR to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur, 0.4 pixels at 50%) after final size reduction.

[Isaac Grant]

Love these birds. Such personality. You have nice details here and I like the stare as it tells a story. The bird seems a bit washed out to me. And I would try and see if I could clone out the twig that cuts across the back of the birds head.

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Lovely looking bird Glenn, I like the detail and the close up you got here. The BG is a bit busy but thats OK.

[William Dickson]

Love this one Glen. Great feather detail you got and I like the pose. Nice colours throughout, I don't mind the BG apart from that twig that Isaac mentioned. The bird looks very 'Australian' if you know what I mean.

Will

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you Isaac, Sanjeev and Will. I've reposted a somewhat darker version below. Hope I haven't gone too far. Sorry, but left the branch behind the bird.

[David Salem]

These guys are awesome. Very aggressive hunters too. The shot looks much better with a few points of black added. You might try bumping up the overall saturation too. Nice and sharp also. Hope I can get one of these guys this November as I will be visiting your country for the first time.
Maybe I could PM you you for a few tips?