Giant Kingfisher, St Lucia Wetlands, South Africa.

Giant Kingfishers, new brushes and RSS.

My first post for 2009 so let me start by wishing readers best wishes for the new year, happy blogging and good health to all!

Today’s image is of a Giant Kingfisher sighted at St Lucia Wetlands in South Africa during my visit there mid 2008. As it’s name suggests, it is one of the larger kingfisher species, this bird was perched on a branch overlooking the water’s edge. Doing some research on this species I’ve found that there are 2 sub species, one that inhabits forested areas back from the water and a second that inhabits the waterways. Additionally, there is a difference in the plumage colours of the male and female, I believe this bird, with it’s red-brown belly and speckled chest, is a female. Whereas the male has a red-brown chest and a speckled belly. (Just in case you were wondering!)

This image has had very little post processing done to it, the colours of the bird are very much as you see here.

Giant Kingfisher, St Lucia Wetlands, South Africa.

Canon 20D with 500mm lens at F8.0, shutter speed 1/250 second at ISO 400.

Signature Brush.

As you can see, I’ve changed my signature brush in Photoshop to reflect the new year. I was about to post this image when I realized my existing brush was out of date, so I quickly created a new one. My policy on dating the images is to apply the brush to show the year of processing and initial publication rather than the date of image capture. If anyone’s using Photoshop and are curious about the process, let me know.

RSS feeds.

I’m currently going through my friend’s list and subscribing to the RSS feeds of those that allow it. The advantage is that in Internet Explorer, I can go to my feeds list and quickly see which sites have updated since I was last online. This way I don’t miss the updates. If you wish to keep up to date with what I’m doing, consider subscribing to the RSS feed for this site, you’ll find the subscribe button at top of page.

HD Video feedback.

As indicated in my last post, I’ve made available a High Definition DVD quality video slideshow as a FREE download via my main site at www.kevindowie.com If you haven’t checked it out already then take a look. It runs for about 4 minutes and is a 39 meg file, if you have broadband internet access it’ll take about a minute or so to download. Thanks to those who’ve already commented, the feedback I’ve received so far, both on this site and elsewhere, has been excellent. KD.