Mallard Drake in flight, Yellowstone County, Montana.

[steve torna]

Last weekend, I was practicing BIF photography with a borrowed 7D ii and although my efforts were largely a failure, I did make several nice images of the ducks in flight. Canon 7D ii, 400mm f/5.6 lens hand held, ISO 800, 1/400 second @ f/8, process in Lightroom 5.

[gail bisson]

Welcome to BPN Steve.
A very nice first image.
IQ looks good and I like the wing position.
Do you have more room at the bottom and a bit more at the top. It feels a bit too tight to my eye.
I also wish that the shadow across the back of the eye was not there but you have just enough light to make this a keeper!
gail

[steve torna]

Thank you Gail, I appreciate your thoughts. I checked and I do have a little bit of room to open it up. I will be on the River again tonight, I hope to capture a similar pose without the shadow over the head. Here is the image with no crop at all. Its not a significant difference but better. Now if I may self critique, I wish the subject was shifted to the right entering the frame rather than exiting. Thanks again!

[Raybel Robles]

Hi Steve

I agree with Gail's comments above. the repost adds a bit more room on the bottom and top but it moved the bird to the left side of the frame, you would ideally have the bird on the right hand side flying towards the left empty space. I would crop a bit from the right and add a bit of canvas infront of the bird (left side).

[Diane Miller]

Very nice! A crop from the right will give you a classic image. And it isn't difficult to add canvas on the left and fill it in. If you use content-aware fill, beware of its tendency to create some posterization, easily cloned out.

A slight increse in Exposure or Shadows could reveal a little more detail in the darker areas, but it could bring up some noise.

[steve torna]

Thank you very much, I appreciate
each observation and the kind and constructive suggestions.

[steve torna]

One final image, I compromised between having the mallard too tight and entering into the frame and I decreased shadow and added an additional +5 NR.