Photo by Anders
Two amazingly beautiful bee-eaters
The photo shows a pair of bee-eaters in a sandy area in Maglarp in southern Skåne in Sweden on June 2 this year, at 07.50 in the morning. It was taken with a Canon R5 Mark II and Canon RF 200-800mm F6.3-9 IS USM Lens. 1/4000 sec, F9.0.
It was the first time I saw bee-eaters in real life. I stood at a distance and was quite surprised when I came home with several hundred pictures that I thought were up to scratch. This particular image stood out in that I managed to catch them both as they left their nest.
Post processing notes:
I imported the RAW file into Lightroom Classic with the adaptive color preset, but otherwise I did not process the image in LC. Instead, I started by opening it in the On1 NoNois plugin. Since the birds are photographed at quite a distance, I crop the image in On1 NoNoise immediately after I have noise processed it (ISO 1600). Then I save it down to LC as a DNG file. After that, I open the file in the On1 Effects plugin where I mask the birds using the fantastic Supermask tool. I apply the following effects to the birds: Channel Mixer (Warming Polarizer), Tone Enhancer (Contrast) (Higlights Darker) and (Midtones Lighter). Using local adjustment, I lighten shadows and exposure around the birds' eyes. I make an inverted mask of the birds and darken the background slightly and add a lighter vignetting effect. Next, I sharpen the birds slightly with the Sharpness effect filter (Amazing Detail Finder). Next, I exported the file to the desktop as a JPG sRGB.Exif information:
| Copyright: | Anders |
| Camera: | Canon EOS R5m2 |
| Aperture: | f/9 |
| Focal Length: | 800mm |
| ISO: | 1600 |
| Shutter Speed: | 1/4000 sec. |
| Created: | June 2, 2025 00:50:08 |