White Fronted Bee-Eater

[Bulldog_rsa]

This image is of a White Fronted Bee-eater and was shot with an EOS10D at about 7.5m distance. Lens was Sigma 170-500mm at max. zoom and support was a Manfrotto Monopod. Your comments appreciated.

[Rob612]

I think you have all the elements needed. Good composition, the reflection in the eye of the bird, a more than decent bokeh and an excellent level of details. If I have to find something that I would like changed, probably a little bit brighter would help (it looses the details in the shadow of the tail). You can also crop to a square format (i like square formats) and see what it looks like.

[Hellashot]

Looks a little on the dark side.

[Bruce Hamilton]

Almost looks like a hummer with a curved beak.

[Bulldog_rsa]

Thanks for the comments; I will certainly apply them next time.

[CyberDyneSystems]

It's a great shot,. and like Rob says,. you have all the ingredients of a very good bird pic.

If you shot in RAW you can use exposire compensation to brighten things up when you convert..
If you shot jpeg,. mess with "levels", "curves" and or "shadow/highlight" tools in PSCS to bring some light back.

Next.. you'll want to crop it in both closer.. You really have much too much area around the bird showing,...

...and I would look at a crop that gets the bird off center a little,. toward the right hand third of the frame, and lower him a bit as well,. since the bird is looking left and up.. get it?

Then we would want to get the bird sharper and maybe use some noise reduction on the back ground.. help smooth out the bokeh. Use noise reduction or a blur either with a mask or on a seperate layer so that you can erase the effect on the subject.. then do the same with USM but this time the USM is only on the bird,. not the background.

Great shot of a Fabulous looking bird! :) :)