Kingfisher

[CaraRose]

I went to Middlefork Savanna today birding for waterfowl, and ended up finding a Kingfisher that distracted me from anything else

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[paulnj]

Amazing Images Of A Very Leary Subject!

[Loupey]

Not only would I have been "distracted" by a kingfisher, I would have made a trip just for the kingfisher.

My favorite is #9.

[CaraRose]

I'm still shocked she let me get as close to her as she did. She appeared to be completely ignoring me as I kept creeping closer, right until my foot broke through the vegetation on the marshy shoreline and plunge down to above my ankle. The noise of breaking through and the suction noise of pulling my foot out seemed to make her decide to move to the middle of the pond.

Wish I could have captured her as she was entering and emerging from the water in the dives, but all I got was blurs.

[WesternGuy]

Great images CaraRose, thanks for sharing. I haven't seen any of these in my neck of the woods, so it is always nice to see what others find interesting.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

[Eric D]

Nice job against such a white BG...

[mjs1973]

What a great opportunity to photograph such a hard to approach subject!

What lens did you use for these? These is some noticeable chromatic aberration around the out of focus branches in several of these.

[CaraRose]

What a great opportunity to photograph such a hard to approach subject!

What lens did you use for these? These is some noticeable chromatic aberration around the out of focus branches in several of these.

Canon 300mm f/4 IS. I don't think you can blame the lens though, these are cropped in and that bright cloudy sky was not handled particularly well by the photographer I tried to play with lightroom's chromatic aberration tools but anything I did seemed to make it worse.

[Loupey]

I assumed they were high level crops, but still, the 300mm is such a solid performer it is surprising to see so much CA.

Perhaps there is a step in your workflow which is accentuating the CA? Perhaps bringing up the shadows too much?

[CaraRose]

Thanks for the feature!

Loupey, I did up the blacks on some of these and did some highlight recovery, and clarity as well in some of them (in lightroom). Like I said, I think handled the lighting pretty badly, I didn't want the kingfisher to be underexposed and I think I overreacted in the other direction and blew these out a bit.

Dark bird and bright grey sky kill me every time.