Wandering Whistling Duck

[Richard Mc Donald]

With the heat waves just about everywhere is experiencing at the moment including my home areas of Nhulunbuy, for some reason or other for about a half hour in the mornings starting at around 0630 we are getting this beautiful golden glow from the water.

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1DX/800L
ISO800
f/5.6
1/1000
+1/3Ev
33% crop

All editing done on ARC except for final crop and slight curve adjustment. Warmed the shot up from 4750 to 6650 to give the colours a tad more punch.

The brighter patch above and to the left on the ducks head (Egret reflections) has been toned down by burning as much as I could without it looking unatural.

I also played around for the crop for ages and couldn't quite come to an agreement with myself so ...

Richard



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[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Richard,

Greetings. I particularly like the color on the bird. The bg is a bit overwhelming (colors are great but it's the bg). Here's an idea that more or less kills the bg. (I slipped on the crop of the top edge).

123330

Used a solid color fill (selected an bg orange) and blended to knock out the bg highlights and a dupilcate layer of result blended with screen to knock out the bg contrast. Returned the bird with a rough select, refine edge. Cropped the bottom white bits...

Just an idea...

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Richard, this would have been a perfect time to use fill flash. You have a dark bird against a bright background and the eye follows the light, which means that the brain keeps wanting to look at the background instead of the duck. Some fill flash would have made the bird standout a bit more and at least keep up with the level of the bg. Nice flight capture, love the pose. Good suggestions by Michael.

[Marina Scarr]

Your duck looks sharp and quite well exposed but judging from an iPad can't be sure. I really like the RP except need a little more space on top.

[John Chardine]

Hi Richard- I like the BG with the sharp bird against it. Nicely done as I am sure it is not easy to capture these in flight.

I would downplay the tonal variations in the BG with some dodging and burning. I would also crop off the bottom and a little from the left to remove the light highlights and the small areas lurking right on the edge of the image (like the dark one LR).

[Faraaz Abdool]

Richard - Kerry is spot on with his input on this. Dark bird on bright bg calls for fill flash to maintain the proper exposure ratio between subject and bg - I learnt this properly recently thanks to my last post on ETL.
Good flight shot nonetheless, I like the repost although the wingtips seem a bit high