Amazon Kingfisher (female)

[Moe Richard]

Taken in bright late afternoon sun along a Pacific coastal river in Costa Rica. Reprocessed today.

Iso-1250, 500 mm PF +1.4 extender, F8, 800th, D 500, handheld from a moving boat, full frame

[Aditya Sridhar]

You've done a nice job handholding your rig while on a moving boat, Moe. That is a feat in itself, considering the focal length you were at. You've got a great bird species with a clean BG. Love the cobwebs on the perch as well.

Personally, other than the HA and the nictitating membrane, the main problems that I can see in this image are things that can be fixed with careful PP. To my eye, the bird looks over-processed and the feathers seem to have just too much clarity/structure to them. If you used a detail extracting software, you could turn it down and that would alleviate the problem. I also noticed that there are some smoothing artefacts at various places throughout the image (for eg, on the LHS along the perch, the bird's left foot) - not sure what caused them but you might want to have a look at the RAW file. There are also some color issues present on the bird's feet and along the perch on the RHS. The whites on the bird have a blue cast to them - a simple tweak in LR/PS.

All of the PP issues that I've mentioned are easy to fix on the master file though

[John Mack]

Have to agree with aditya's critique. All the points i was thinking were touched on.

[dankearl]

I just do not like the eye on this one and I cannot fix them...

[Moe Richard]

Repost with changes suggested by viewers

[arash_hazeghi]

THis one isn't working for me Moe, the head angle is pointed away from us and I agree the over-processing makes it quite unnatural and strange looking. The repost is indeed much better the original but still not there...



TFS