Portrait Bateleur

[Jeni Williams]

This bird had broken his leg and was treated in captivity for 3 months. He was released on a friend's game farm in Mpumalunga a few days prior to the photo being taken and was sitting on a dry tree near a waterhole. We got to a couple of metres from him before he flew off, so strictly speaking although wild, he was fairly used to humans.
This is full frame.
Canon EOS 40D
focal length: 280mm
f/5.6
SS 1/200sec
ISO 400
.

[Daniel Cadieux]

You were lucky to have had a nice opportunity like this. Light looks like it was on the harsh side of things, and the image a little bright overall. The burn tool could do some good stuff here, especially on the lighter areas of the bill and on some of the paler feathers. A bit more DOF would have given you sharpness at the end of the bill too (I'm normally fine with shallow DOF, but on close-up portraits I prefer the whole face sharp)

[Jeni Williams]

Thanks Daniel, have adjusted exposure slightly and burnt. Hope this looks better now.

[Doug Brown]

Fabulous detail Jeni, and I like what you did with the repost. I agree that stopping down a bit would have strengthened this image. Perhaps a slightly lower angle would have been nice.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Jeni, you are so fortunate to witness this beautiful speciman at such a close distance. Great detail, and well done on your repost.

[stuart wanuck]

lean but mean little too close for me but otherwise very nice

[David Fletcher]

Super details on this Jeni. Good work on the repost.

[Jeni Williams]

Thank you for viewing and commenting. I agree - stopping done would have been better but only thought of it after I had taken the image.

[Harshad Barve]

lovely details , repost looks better, agreed on DOF issue
TFS