Time to go

[Stu Bowie]

Another image from the Pilanesberg National Park taken a few weekends ago. This is the same male Giant Kingfisher posted a little while ago. The BG is a distant mountain, and one has to position yourself so as to have all of the mountain in your frame as a BG. Moving to the right, and you would have half sky and half mountain. Gotta love the BG's at this location. Interesting, my recent Red Eyed Dove posted recently http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/141768 has the same mountain BG, which was captured just after sunrise. This image was captured nearly an hour and a half later. Notice the difference of the colour of the mountain due to different light.

Canon 1D Mark IV
Canon 300mm F/2.8 +2X TC = 600mm
1/2000
F/7.1
ISO 1000

Hand held from a walkway constructed over a dam.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Beautiful elegant and well detailed. Looking closely I can see a bit of a saw tooth edge on the bill and breast.

[Glenn Pure]

Brilliant shot Stu. IQ looks excellent as does the background and perch. The raised wings and forward lean convey action nicely. As usual, your handling of colours and tones here is excellent.

[Tim Foltz]

Stu, when I look at this I think of a runner at the starting blocks…
Unique pose and nice soft BG.

-Tim

[William Dickson]

Love this one Stu. You captured the bird perfectly as it was ready for take off. The details are very nice, as is the pose. The perch and BG ain't too bad either. Very nice.

Well done

Will

[gail bisson]

This is one heck of a shot.
Perfect take off pose with wings up and you got a great HA as well.
Perfect BG and nice simple perch.
No nits from me Stu,
Gail

[Stu Bowie]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

[Mike Poole]

Wow, thats a killer frame Stu - I really can't fault this at all. If they're anything like as quick as 'our' kingfishers then I'm even more impressed!. Perfect wings up pose almost parallel to the camera plane and all this in nice light

Mike

[Glenn Conlan]

Nailed the perfect wing position

[David Salem]

Wow!! This is awesome Stu. Love everything about this one. Awesome Kingfisher frame.