Bee Eater Close Up

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

D700
300mm f/2.8G VR II with TC-20E III
600mm
ISO 800
f/8 at 1/1000s
Manual mode
Matrix Metering
AF-C, Dynamic 9 points
Auto white balance
Tripod inside a blind

Cropped from 4256x2832 to 1340x961

Shadow recovery, selective darken some area of the bird, increase contrast, NR and sharpen.

Original image has some part of the bird cut off so I made a close up crop of face portrait. This is too much of a crop than I would like (about 11% of original left) but it might pass for web usage :p
Wish there wasn't dirt on the neck of the bird.

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

[Levina de Ruijter]

The crop holds up real well on my monitor. Nice close-up. Bird well exposed. I would remove that little bit of dirt on the neck in PS.

[John Chardine]

Suberb colour Thanaboon. Love these tight portraits. The light is great. I like the composition. I agree with Levina, at least for the wall, the speck should go. Also I think the eye should be sharper than it is. Run selective sharpening on this and you have a winner.

[Julie Kenward]

John's right - you kept the colors under control and that's amazing for a bird this colorful! I would wish for a little more DOF so the beak had a bit more detail in it. Otherwise, agree with John that this is VERY nice!

If you don't know how to clone out the bit on the neck let me know and I'll walk you through it.

[Doug Robertson]

Excellent, I would be very pleased if this was my image.

[annmpacheco]

What a great portrait. colors, HA, and detail. Its pretty