Something a bit different from the normal Kingfisher on a stick shot but not sure if I'm allowed to post it in this category?
Anyway, this all came about by a mistake really. I was trying to get an image of the Kingfisher entering or erupting out of the water but had set the framing too tight, to change this meant getting back into the water and re-setting everything. So instead I gently moved the zoom ring back and carried on taking pictures, unfortunately I'd moved it back too much and they were too far away for the full frame images I was after.
After weeks of looking at them cursing my luck I came up with this sort of image by overlapping each frame of the sequence.
Maybe not to everyones taste but it at least saved a days worth of images for me, to some extent..
Techs: 1/5000 @ F4 EC -1 ISO250 1D MK11N mounted on a monopod and pushed into the bottom of the pond to hold the lens and camera just above the water.... Lens: 70/200F2.8L @ 150mm
Fired with a cable release, no flash
Still not that good at processing so getting the image lighter without blowing the whites on the cheeks of the bird is difficult..
Thanks for looking.
Merry christmas and best wishes for the new year.
Tony
This is lovely, Tony. I think the composite works well and the lower 2 (especially the bottom one) images would work well on their own. Only drawback is the light angle which would have been a little nicer if behind you. I have tried a version adjusted by just lifting the curve a little in the darker regions of the image and then dodging the face of the upper bird. Simply lifting the curve doesn't alter the black and white points so shouldn't blow the highlights.
I think this is great and well executed! I think the line going across the frame in the middle is the only distraction. Kingfishers are such beautiful birds and this image shows their behavior very well!! I like it alot-How hard was it to do?
Tony, repost looks much better, thanks. Must improve my processing skills, never played with curves before, all I do is adjust the levels to the histogram...
The repost made this even better and it is always great to see kingfishers. Very interesting behavior. You could have posted it in the 'out of the box, postprocessing' forum, too.
Clever and well executed image Tony. Tony W's curves application makes it even better. I'm happy getting one image of a KF, this is too much. Well done!
This is a really great sequence. Excuse my ignorance, but how in the world do you setup for the bird to hunt in front of the camera? Surly you couldn't be that lucky!?!?