Several days ago I posted this photograph in this forum but it was moved to the "captive and handof man" forum due to the presence of bands in the legs of on of the birds. I talked to both, Lana and Axel, and they allowed me to re-post this photograph in this forum. Axel and Lana I acknowledge and appreciate your efforts and the friendly discussion we had about the matter ;-) In Spain a very important part of wild flamingo population is banded under a long term banding program. The breeding population of this species concentrate on a single place where, each year, almost the entire number of young is banded on a single day. Is not easy to photograph a flamingo without a band and I am talking about a very huge population... 10.000 to 20.000 pairs on a single lagoon. The amount of birds banded each year is massive....
This pair of birds shown here were photographed on another place (the same day and location of my previous post). The high ISO, and sutter speed is due to the fact that I was waiting for a black tailed godwit flight when I saw two flamingoes with a very interesting fighting behaviour and I shoted on the fly, just adjusting the exposure compensation
By the way, I am pretty happy with the response of the 2X Nikkor TC. This is the TC with the poor performance on the Nikon lineup but matched with the 300 works really fine. Here I stopped down the lens just one stop when the sweet spot of this combo is two stops down. Anyway, the result is fantastic in terms of optical quality and sharpness.
Doñana National Park (Huelva) Spain
Nikon D2X AFS Nikkor 300VR + 2XTC ISO 400 1/3200s f6,3 -0,7EV tripod (no hide) croped to vertical
Welcome and well done. Love the interaction and the raised wings but would love to see a bit more room at the top. As you say, it is very sharp. Did you do anything to sharpen the eyes? Greater Flamingos have what I call "floating pupils" and it often seems impossible for them to be rendered really sharp without some post-processing help.
Later and love, artie
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Thanks for the comments. Arthur regarding your question I usually perform sharpenning only to the main subject keeping the BG free of sharpening to avoid problems with the high ISO I usually do (ISO 400 is my limit with the D2X and I rarely go over 400). In this case, as far as I can remember, I didn´t performed a selective sharpening on the eyes (if you are interested on the matter I can check the original file and will let you know about). I perform that kind of selective sharpening on the eyes but very scarcely and only when the file needs a deep procesing.
Juan
I'm glad to see this image back and really enjoyed the information provided. I liked this image the first time I saw it.......wonderful detail and a great behavior. The curve of the necks is interesting. Well done.
Lovely behaviour, pose , colours - I really like the colourful reflection on the water. The background story is really nice and adds to understanding the image. Tagging of wild birds doesn't alter their wildness or freedom except for the time that they are being tagged. Agree re slightly more headroom - the green is about 1/2 the height of the water - if the sky were half the height of the green it would look nicer.
Repost: Flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber)
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