European Roller with Armour cricket

[peter delaney]

This image was taken last week near Satara ,Kruger ,South Africa. This time of the year the birding is amazing. This Roller's eyes were bigger than his belly , after numerous attempts to swallow the cricket he eventually dropped him....

It was a cloudy day ,image was shot with D3 and 200-400 vr . taken from car window , used bean bag and panning plate. 10% crop..minor adjustments in PS.

ps..this is my first post..really looking forward to becoming an active member on this exciting website.:)

[David Hemmings]

Beautiful capture of this lovely species, the soft light really allowed the feather detail to show nicely.

[Blake Shadle]

Welcome, Peter! It's great to have you. This is a very nice image as your first post. You have a nice clean background and an interesting subect and behavior, but there are a few things that I might suggest. I would crop a little off the bottom, just above the black hole in the perch. Also, the light angle in the image has better light falling on the subject's back than on his face. I think if the light angle were different in this image, it would make for a great improvement. Thanks for sharing!

[Fabs Forns]

Hi Peter,

Red carpet welcome, looking forward to seeing all the beautiful birds from your side of the pond :)

I played a bit with it, duplicated the layer in PS and used Multiply as blending mode and reduced the opacity to taste, to give the colors more density. Then went to Nik Color Efex 3.) and used the Darken/Lighten center filter, increasing the Luminosity of the center to illuminate the face. Hope you like it!

Very nice image :)

[peter delaney]

thank you David,Blake and Fabs for lovely welcome..very appreciative....I am relative new comer to wildlife /nature photography ...and as far as PS is concerned ,up to last week after attending a course by Chris Van Rooyen I had only been doing Raw adjustments....thanks to Chris I have a basic workflow but have a long way to go to master this art.....

Fabs I appreciate you taking time out to show me what can be done..I like what you have done very subtle but a great improvement....my learning curve as just begun ...

Blake agree about crop.....

thanks again to you all

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

I Iike Fabs rework,nice timing and compo!!!!

[Isak Pretorius]

All's bee said. I'd like to add a "well done!"

[Jody Melanson]

Welcome to BPN, Peter! Lots of help and great photographers here. I like your image. The improvements Fabs made are what I would have suggested. :) Look forward to more from you.

[peter delaney]

thanks Manos,Isak, and Jody...appreciate you taking time out to comment

[David Steele]

Welcome Peter, I like your photo and love the perch. How do you manage to train your rollers? Only joking . . . all has already been said.

[peter delaney]

Thanks David........no training ,just super glue.........