Today’s “Image of the day” is of a Crested Kingfisher
Article 18 of “Image of the Day” Series.
EXIF:
Camera: Canon 7D M2
Lens: Canon 400mm f/5.6 L
Shutter speed: 1/800 Sec
f-stop: f/6.3
ISO: 2000
Aperture Priority
Evaluative Metering.
I was previously a Group leader with a photography group and have lead several photo walks over weekends. One winter morning, as we were shooting birds in outskirts of Mumbai, one of my participants pointed out to a common Kingfisher sitting out in the open. He was elated , and very casually pointed that you might have seen a lot of them. Very confidently I replied that I have, although the truth was, that was my first Kingfisher. I felt very guilty of myself and questioned my ability to lead a photo walk.The point of the whole story is, I am not very lucky with Kingfishers.
Very rarely do I see Kingfishers and furthermore, if I do see them they are always out of my shooting range. This cold winter morning, while I was on my regular photo walk, I stumbled by chance upon a pair of Crested Kingfishers. I am sure you do know that Crested Kingfishers are the largest Kingfishers in India.
Crested Kingfisher is not exactly a very co-operative kind of bird. It is shy and stays away from humans. These two were no exceptions either, and whenever I tried to approach them, they would simply fly to a different rock along the river. Getting a close up shot was hence out of the question. I then thought, that I could probably make a habitat shot and began looking for various compositions.
Keeping my distance, I followed them along the river, till this guy perched on this rock. As soon I saw through the viewfinder, I knew I had perfect composition here. The swiftly flowing river, has a particularly rough look to it and perched on this rock, the subject very calmly seems to convey the message of how rough its habitat and life is.
That’s it for the day, end of Blog 18
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