birds, lilac-breasted roller, Africa, wildlife

The original sky behind this lilac-breasted roller I captured in Africa was solid white. I liked the stark contrast between the background and the remarkable colors in the feathers, but it didn't look real. It almost looked liked I'd taken the picture in a photo studio with strobes and a white paper backdrop behind the bird. So, I replaced the sky with a photograph that is slightly out of focus to simulate a lack of complete depth of field. The picture of the bird was taken with a Canon 500mm f/4 telephoto along with a 1.4x teleconverter giving me 700mm of focal length. The settings were 1/125, f/5.6, and 320 ISO. I took this shot with my first digital camera, the Canon 1Ds Mark II, and in 2008 noise was a serious issue in images 800 ISO and above. That's why the ISO is low and the shutter is relatively slow. I used a bean bag to steady the camera and lens. Had I taken this today, I would have used 1/500 and raised the ISO to 1250.