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One of my favorite images from a recent trip to Australia to visit family. I heard a ton of commotion from these two Kookaburras before spotting them. The tug-of-war was still happening after I left after several minutes
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The tug of war over the large spear beaked bug is really cool, it’s like they’re trying to see who gets the biggest portion of a wishbone (chicken wishbone that is).
When I was a kid, my brother and I would pull on a chicken wishbone and whoever got the part with the center section after it snapped won the prize, the prize was usually the last piece of chicken. To be honest though, we usually spit whatever was left, it was just a bit of fun as youngsters
I really like the composition as well as the low perspective!
The details and the DOF is very good in my view.
The only thing I see is a minor amount of bright spots on their heads and maybe a touch on the tail of the left one but getting the exposure right on opportunistic shots like this can be tough unless you already had the chance to set the exposure beforehand, even then it can be easy to miss. About 1 stop down might have done the trick.
I do wonder if you could have lowered the exposure, whites and/or highlight in Lr or ACR in the RAW file (if you’re a Lr or ACR user). Some folks like using a linear profile for recovering details in bright spots but I’ve found that for me, I can sometimes just lower the exposure, whites and highlights in the RAW file on slightly overexposed images.
Either way it’s a wonderful image to be proud of as it is!!
Hi Eduard, great capture of these kookaburras interacting over what appears to be a crayfish. Great look at an eye of each and the sharpness on both birds looks great with nice DOF. Interesting habitat although some selective removing of the branches above the birds could be an improvement. Some whites on the birds look hot. I am wondering if there is range to tone these areas down in the RAW file. Really nice catch!
Eduard, my first reaction is ‘cool’! Getting moments of action is never easy, and you managed to tell the story here with these two birds. That being said, based on your comment that they were doing this for quite some time, I might have moved slightly right, so that the right-hand bird’s head would shift to the left and separate from the branch. I prefer to do as much as I can in the field to simplify things, rather than just removing branches or leaves later on, to keep my photos natural. That’s just me, though! It is still a nice image. I agree with others about possibly toning down the ‘hot’ bright areas a bit.
To be honest though, we usually spit whatever was left, it was just a bit of fun as youngsters