Amazon Kingfisher

[Raymond Barlow]

D200 - 200-400 VR
1/80s f/6.3 at 400.0mm iso320

Palo Verde National Park, Costa Rica
December 15, 2006
hand held from tour boat, natural light, 50% of ff.

One of my favourite images form our visit to a wonderful country.

There are a few things I would like to change on this image, head turn, the branch behind the bird, tough dark lighting, but
I left it as is, just tweaked it a little in photoshop.

[Markus Jais]

Beautiful shot. You already mentioned the things you would like to change. I think this is great as it is.

Markus

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

Agree for the branch behind the bird,
otherwise I Iike the pose,soft light and the details!

[Ilija Dukovski]

I love the composition and the crop, the two diagonal branches make it for me.
The dark BG goes very nicely with the bird here too. I wish you had slightly better HA,
the whites on the neck look flat, did you try linear burn on them, how about recovery in ACR?

BTW Palo Verde in one of my favorite birding spots in CR.

[James Salywoda]

Great Work! Ray I really like your composition here the bird really stands out nicely the details and colors are excellent.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Good self critique Ray, but I like the dark "deep jungle" mood to this image. I agree with the whites on the neck being a little hot, and I would perhaps darken the upper mandible a bit. I like your pano crop - it works well here :-)

[Ramon M. Casares]

I like the idea of darkening the OOF branch behind the bird, I do like the light and BG works well for me, nice pose and exppsure although I would tone down the whites.
Congratulaitons!

[Stu Bowie]

Now, here's a kingfisher I havent seen before. Just love those greens on him, and his beak is similar to our giant kingfisher's beak. Even with the darker colours, he still stands out so well from the BG. I agree the whites are a bit hot.

[Raymond Barlow]

thanks everyone .. I sent Axel the raw file this morning, because I think he is one of the best
editors I know of, and I respect his work. He did a really fine job with this image., and addressed a lot of the points mentioned.

thanks Axel., very much appreciated.

[Raymond Barlow]

ps.. I would also like to say Axels edit is about as good as this image can get.

[Morkel Erasmus]

you can say that again! amazing repost of an already beautiful shot. never seen this bird before...

[Mike Tracy]

Nicely done on the original and Axel took it even further. Really pretty bird and I like the darkish background. Maybe contemplate removing the multiple catch lights.

[Harshad Barve]

Agreed with your own points
This bird is quite similar to Collared KF we see here in India
TFS
Harshad

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Hi Ray
HA or not, it is one gorgeous bird. I can see why you like it so much. The memory remains! Thanks for sharing.

[colincarter]

Great shot Ray, i like natural shots, I think post processing is getting out of hand these days and alot of it looks fake anyway which ruins good photos.
people are getting too hung up about removing things that were there. Nature by its very definition is messy. If a branch or a leaf is there, its there.

I liked the crop on the first shot better, i think the second one is a little too close and the colours dont seem right, the branches are very red.

[Raymond Barlow]

thanks to everyone for the cool comments, very much appreciated.

[Juan Aragonés]

Ray I like the mood of the scene, the dark BG is very good, very rainforest-like and I think it works very nicely.
Axel did a very good job but I would keep your original idea of a pano crop :-)