We visited Costa Rica's La Ensenada Lodge in no small part to photograph the Turquoise-Browed Motmot. Our reward for putting up with the heat was an exceptional couple of days of bird photography, not to mention some close encounters with Howler Monkeys. I was fortunate to find this Motmot on a clean perch, but I was ill-prepared for the low light as I had no camera support whatsoever. I was extremely lucky to get this low-light image sharp because I was hand holding in a vertical orientation with a flash and a Beamer attached to the body.
Canon 1D Mark III, 500mm + 1.4x, f/5.6, 1/50, ISO 1600, +2/3 EC, fill flash, hand held
Wow, this is the most beautiful motmot species I have ever seen Doug. Fantastic BG, soft light (excelent use of the fill flash, by the way) and pose. Head turn and eye contact are both spoted one. Very, very nice job :-O
Excellent! I love the pose, the backside view, the detail and BG and light and colors, to be honest I only wish for a bit more DOF so to get the tail tip sharp, but I love this shot just as it is! Congratulationos!