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| Pied Kingfisher Full Spread |
Pied Kingfishers are master acrobats in the air. They flap their wings so rapidly, even a movie of them taken at 60 frames per second seems jumpy. Photograph them enough, and once in a while you might get lucky to get their full wings and tails on display, like in this photo. What's even better, this one was just turning as I was taking the photo, so we can see the top side of their wings, which is much rarer! What an incredible bird...
What do I like about this photo? The full spread - the wings and tail are amazing. The pose showing us the top side of the wings, which is much more interesting than the usually seen bottom side. I used a fast shutter speed (1/2500 of a second) to freeze the action so everything is very sharp. The amount of details on the wings and tail is great. There's even a bit of eye contact!
What would I want to improve? Having the sun behind the Kingfisher would have the sunlight shine through the wings for a more dramatic effect. A sparkle of light in the eye would have upgraded this photo. I would also have liked for all this action to have occurred a bit closer to me, so I could get more details on the feathers.