Morning Bufflehead

[Michael Thompson]

I finally got a Bufflehead drake close with decent morning sunlight. I played a couple duck calls on my cell phone and he swam in for a closer look. Lake Harriet Minneapolis MN Canon 7D ll 100-400ll 1.4x lll, 1/2500 ss 520 mm, f8, 640 iso

[Bill Dix]

Nice colors and slight head turn. I can never get these guys to come in close to me.

[Isaac Grant]

Really pretty light and nice job getting him close. I agree with Bill they rarely come anywhere near you around here. These are extremely difficult birds to get right as they are strikingly black and white and have those rainbow colors on their head. I think the colors of the bird as presented are not accurate. The whites of the body have been grayed out which typically happens from lowering the exposure too much or too much burning. Also I think there is a little more detail to be had in the dark area of the back.

[stuart wanuck]

lovely color great bg

[arash_hazeghi]

the bufflehead is my favorite duck, I like the low angle and you had some nice light. I agree with Issac that the whites look grey, it seems they were hot in RAW and too much recovery or burning lead to the grey while the blacks don't have much detail. there is a yellowish color cast too. If you have Canon DPP try highlights -4 and shadows +3 to see if you can improve this. It is a challenging subject

TFS

[Daniel Grossi]

Terribly difficult duck to get Michael - good job. Like many others said, the colors seem a bit off, though that certainly could be the orange light.

[Michael Thompson]

Thanks for the comments everyone! I did try to darken the whites, I don't know why the whites were so hot on the raw file, I watch my highlight warnings on the BOC religiously. Oh well, I got quite a few frames to work on, hopefully I can get something better posted soon.