Too much crop?

[James Babbitt]

This is a Ruddy Duck silhouette that was taken in the pre dawn hours at a local lake. I was in a portable blind trying to get shots of dancing grebes at a near by island on the lake when this guy came swimming along. He was not much further than MFD, maybe 20' away. I was shooting with too much lens, as is common for me, using a 7D2 with a 500 mm II + 1.4 extender (effective 1120 mm). ISO 400, SS 1/3200. f/5.6. I underexposed this on purpose as the duck was pretty drab in appearance but I did like the tail. I did crop a small amount from the front to give it an 10x8 aspect. Did I make a mistake in cropping? Any other suggestions. Not a lot has been done to this shot otherwise.

[Bretoteanu Dan]

I like the sillhouette of the duck, the detail in the head feathers and the trail of water in front and behind. I think if you would let a little more space RHS, and at the bottom it would look better, the wave in its wake its cut off too sharply. I see a lot of specks or spots in the upper half of the image, dust on sensor?

[James Babbitt]

Thank you for your thoughts. I had not noticed the spots you mentioned but now that I look, they are obvious. No, not my sensor; I used the spot healing brush to remove a few floaters on the water and I see it did not do as good a job as I thought. I will go back to the RAW and redo those and see how much room I have on the RHS; I know I do not have any on the bottom, but that would probably be easy to add some canvas.


I like the sillhouette of the duck, the detail in the head feathers and the trail of water in front and behind. I think if you would let a little more space RHS, and at the bottom it would look better, the wave in its wake its cut off too sharply. I see a lot of specks or spots in the upper half of the image, dust on sensor?

[Randy Stout]

James:

I agree with the assessment from Dan. The image has a lot of dramatic potential, but needs a bit of compositional love.

Cheers

Randy

[David Roach]

Nice and sharp ( both duck and reflection). Love the image design and framing comments are spot on. TFS

[John Mack]

The graphic look is great. Also digging all that blue. What's up with the faded blue on the bill. Some cloning done there?

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

I would make this image symmetrical by addin more canvas at the bottom and removing at the top etc.

I will also darken the bill.

This has potential.

TFS

[James Babbitt]

Is this an improvement? I went back to the RAW. Had lots of room on the right. Added canvas on the left and bottom. Also used the Median tool to smooth out the background where I had to clone out a number of pieces of debris on the surface of the water. Nothing was done to the bill. I am not sure why it appeared translucent in the first shot.