wing stretch

[John Chardine]

Ducks including this female Ring-neck will often rear-up and flap their wings. It's a challenge to capture this and those who have tried can attest that the bird often looks ungainly at any particular moment. Anyway, here's an attempt at capturing this behaviour at the Sackville Waterfowl Park this evening. The head angle is not great and I don't like the sidelighting creating a dark face on the bird; but it is what it is, as someone I know occasionally says!

40D, 500 mm f4, 1.4x tcII
June 21, 2008 5:30:12 PM
exposure program: Aperture Priority
ISO speed: 640
shutter speed: 1/1600
aperture: f5.6
exposure bias: +1.0 (lots of backlight from the water)
metering: Pattern
light source: Auto
flash: ON - Beamer, no compensation

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Definitely not easy to capture. I like the angle and wing flap. I agree regarding the sidelight and may sharpen a bit less. As for the composition, I'm wondering if more room at the bottom would improve the image in order to include where the body touches the water.

[John Chardine]

Thanks Axel. Unfortunately this is all of the lower part of the bird that I have!! I had the 1.4x tc on and rather than bail out decided to capture the top half of the bird.

[Arthur Morris]

Hey John, I was shocked not to see a gannet! Good self critique. The clipped wings are a bit problematic but yes, it is what it is. Darkening the mid-tones would like improve the impact...

[John Chardine]

Many thanks to all. Here's a retry. I masked out the head (didn't want any darker) and darkened the midtones using Curves and some burning with a big, soft brush. Change is subtle but noticeable. I clipped the left wing on exposure and forgot to mention in the first post that I cropped the right wing a similar amount for symmetry.

[Arthur Morris]

Better. Whenever you work off angle to the light you introduce a variety of problems...