Laughing Kookaburra

[Colin Driscoll]

Preening, early morning light
Canon EOS R5 EF 600 f4 III 1.4x III 840mm resting on deck rail
1/1250 f5.6 iso250
ACR PS2023 Crop Sharpen plus a bit of fiddling about

[Jonathan Ashton]

Clean image, the very strong shadow leads to a loss of detail on the RHS which I feel does not help image presentation.

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Colin. I do like the pose here, but must agree with Jonathan here, but add that for me the BG is too prominent here..detracting from the bird. If it were mine I'd use the masking facility in ACR to select the bird/perch, invert the mask and reduce the BG contrast, clarity and even maybe the saturation to give prominence to the bird. It might take some work, but it would also be possible to add some lightness to the perch/wing area on the RHS if you wanted to.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Colin ... a nice clear view to the Kookaburra .
But i can´t get it to make it work for me , as i do think the BG is a bit cluttered and made worse with all the contrast you have thrown into it . The subject is too contrasty as well for my taste .
Sorry ... maybe trying to process it differently might save the shot to a degree .

TFS Andreas

[Kurt Bowman]

I agree nice view of this species with a unique pose, but the BG is pretty cluttered as stated and I also agree about too much contrast on this one.

[Daniel Cadieux]

High contrast and difficult background stacked up against you here. Subject is sharp, and I love the pose, especially that the bill is quite visible among the split feathers.