Kingfishers in the Sun

Last week I encountered what is probably my favourite mammal that I’ve photographed, the Fox.  This week I was able to do the same with my favourite  British bird, the Kingfisher.  After the Bee Eater, this has to be one of most colourful and prettiest bird of which you don’t really realise until you can get up close and look at the colour and detail in its plumage. I’d like to say that this photographing opportunity was brought upon by my diligence and skills in the field but were taken at a local hide.  Normally I prefer not to use hides but on this day I had been out all morning walking around on a hot day and decided to get out of the sun and have a break.  The hide already had a number of photographers in so I new something was up (it’s normally empty) and the recent addition of some strategically placed ‘perches’ around the overlooking water edges meant it was likely Kingfishers.  Having barely glimpsed a Kingfisher in a year never mind photographed one, I wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity so set up the Sigma 500mm lens sighted onto one of the perches. I didn’t have to wait long before the first one arrived followed shortly by a second.  I was sure the noise of numerous shutters clattering away would have spooked it but it didn’t – it must have become accustomed to it – and proceeded to catch a healthy supply of fish.  For the next three hours three Kingfishers made regular appearances moving to the various perches giving me the time and opportunity to get some decent images though these reduced quality ones for the blog don’t really show the colours and detail in the plumage, but will eventually upload the original ones to my website.

Having so much time to photograph these Kingfishers gave me the opportunity to try varying the exposure modes, aperture and ISO settings as well as the format.  Most of images were ‘bare’ as no converter was required for most of the time but did need some additional exposure compensation due to the angle of the light.  Strangely, this opportunity was so good I was disappointed with many of my images once I got home and looked at them, though I’m still going through the 4+ gigabyte of images I took.  I can see where I went wrong and hope to get out and have another go photographing them before they disperse (or the hide becomes too crowded with photographers!).