Giant Kingfisher

[Chris Kotze]

Canon EOS 40D

1/6000 ss f7.1 ISO 400

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice banking pose!! I like the vertical comp with those spread wings but would crop out about half of the space below and then desaturate the blues a bit as they are a bit much as is. You can also try to open up the shadow on the lower wing. Still, the difficulty degree on this image is pretty high...congrats on a fine effort!

[Randy Stout]

Chris:

Agree with Daniel, a wonderful pose. The wings, esp. the upper one seem significantly sharper than the head, so would guess that is where the focus point was. Perhaps another round of selective sharpening on the head.

Nice exposure with maybe just a tiny loss of detail on the breast whites.

Thanks so much for sharing.

Randy

[Tony Whitehead]

Well done, Chris. Good like and pose. Agree with the comments on sharpness - is this a significant crop?

[Randy Stout]

Tony:

I thought that the cropping might be the issue too, but the wing detail was good enough, that the head should be better than it shows, if the focus was right on. Chris, can you let us know how much of crop this was?

Randy

[Stu Bowie]

A very fast flier across the water, so well done at least for getting him in the frame. Super wingspread showing good feather detail. Randy has a point regarding the sharpness.

[Chris Kotze]

Thanks for all the comments.
Yep these guy's are super fast, I only got this one shot in frame and it were a bit far for the 400 lens.
This is more than a 50% crop hens the lost of IQ.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Cool pose and eye contact. Adding to the other comments, I would run NR on the BG.

[Ilija Dukovski]

Very powerful bird and image.
The pose is so directional I would try a horizontal crop
if possible.

[Dave Barnes]

Well captured Chris, these guys are fast. I like the thought of a horizontal crop proposed by Ilija.

[Chris Kotze]

Thanks Ilija and Dave I will try a horisonatl crop as well