Wood Duck #2 !

[Brandon Holden]

http://www.peregrineprints.com/NSN/wodi2.jpg
1D M2n, 600 + 1.4xTC w/ 550EX and BB... ISO 320, F 7.1, 1/200... 94% of frame

Thanks to the tips and advice from the last Wood Duck I posted, I decided to fix up a different shot (from the same day this past April), and see how it turned out. This time I feel better about the sharpening, but I wonder if you think the composition could be improved?

Happy Shooting!

Brandon

[Paul Davey]

Great colours, great light and I like the slightly turned head. The breast is well lit, as is the head which brings out the metallic gloss. Good shot.

Paul

[Steve Foss]

Brandon, this is a fine shot of a stunning bird on a perfect BG. The lighting is just right, and the BG really makes this shot.

It looks quite too saturated on my monitor, however, and the BG is grainy and has too much texture for my taste. That makes me wonder if you sharpened the whole image or selectively sharpened the bird alone. If this were my image, I'd have not sharpened the BG, but would have lassoed the subject (and its reflection) and applied sharpening there, and would have experimented with noise reduction and light gaussian blur on the BG. After lassoing the bird/reflection and sharpening that, I select "inverse" in CS2 to highlight the background and run NR and G blur on that, always knowing I can retreat to a previous step if I don't like the results.

Forgive me if you already know all this. It's a truly fine image.

[Milo Burcham]

Beautiful image. Really like the colors and reflection but, gaudy as these birds really are, the saturation might be a bit over.

[Nikolay Staykov - shotlandetsa]

This is very splendid image! The saturation here is strong indeed, but not overburn on my monitor.

Steve, thank you for sharing the post-process technique, I think it will work fine for my image PP :)

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Composition and details look very good. It might be a bit oversaturated and/or overflashed. Did you try to desaturate a few points and do you remember the FEC setting?

[David Hemmings]

Excellent image Brandon, one of the best wd shots I have seen in a while, superb exposure and light:D

[Alfred Forns]

Love it Brandon !!!! One smoking image !!!! Big Congrats !!!!!!! Composition wise you could take a tad of the top but that is being extreme This an sweet image !!!

[Jody Melanson]

Beautiful image, Brandon. I like the colours, especially the water. As for composition, I would like to see more room all the way around in the frame, making Mr. WD smaller in the image. I would also run NR selectively on the water to make it more silky.

[Glenn Bartley]

Hey Brandon. I'd like to see a touch more on the right. I agree about the NR on the BG.

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

Great angle,colors and details!!!