This is a ringed kingfisher I photographed in the Pantanal region of Brazil. What always amazed me about this shot is that I captured it from a moving boat, and it’s sharp. I never thought it was possible to take a sharp photograph of a fairly small bird flying directly at me while I was moving in the opposite direction in a high speed boat. I had activated all the focus points because that produced the optimum possibility that at least one of the points would lock onto the bird. Since the sky was overexposed and monochromatic, no other elements in the scene interfered with the AF mechanism locking onto the bird. The 14 frames per second feature of the Canon 1Dx Mark II was another contributing factor that helped me get this shot. I cropped this image to fill the frame with the beautiful details of the kingfisher. In addition, I replaced the original white sky with a cloudy background that’s more dynamic. My settings for this were 1/1600, f/11, and 200 ISO. I was shooting with a 70-200mm telephoto. What makes this picture work so well -- in my opinion -- is the way the tail feathers are spread.
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