Female Mallard Preening

[denise ippolito]

Canon 40D
ISO- 250
EF 500mm
1/640 sec. at f/6.3

[Gus Cobos]

A very nice composition, image and capture Denise. You have sharp details and good color rendition. The color of the water is very pleasing and compliments your duck very well. I would have liked for Miss. Duck to have his eye opened...:( but thats ok...next time...:):cool:

[Harold Davis]

nice sharpness and great exposure!! agree with gus, would like to see a little more of it's eye. everything else looks perfect to me!!

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi Denise:

Very pleasing photo, colours, composition, and sharpness perfect.

Thanks for sharing.

Uncle Gus

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi Denise:

The Devil made me do it ;)

Uncle Gus :D:D

[denise ippolito]

Your crazy I LOVE IT!! details please!!

[Harold Davis]

dang gus! that's nice!!

[Alfred Forns]

Just a slight head twist to have it parallel to the camera ... would make eye visible !!!

[Oscar Zangroniz]

Love the composition Denise. Very sharp. Agree with comments regarding the head angle. Awesome job uncle Gus.
Regards,

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi denise:

Glad you like "Loco"

The details

Hi denise:

Glad you like "loco." :)

The details:

First I went to Google>Images>Mallard. Found female approx. same size as yours.
Then used Hypersnap, http://www.hyperionics.com/ which I have been using since
it came on the market about 15 years ago to capture the eye only. Saved it as "eye"

Then I opened your duck in CS3, then I opened eye. With eye opened I flipped both ways
and a bit of rotation till it looked OK looking at it upside down. Resized it a tad.

Then with eye still opened I used background eraser with tolerance set at 12% (When
contrast between background and subject is slight you need to reduce your tolerance.)
When I did a round of erasing I pressed "V" (Move) and dragged it into position on your
duck. With eye selected in layers I pressed "E" (Eraser) and using opacity & hardness
at different levels I fine tuned erasing.

Then I clicked tiny down arrow at top of Layers display>flatten image and with brush tool
did final fine tuning.

Then I pressed "Q" Quick Mask, then "B" sized it to eye size by pressing Bracket keys,
left smaller, right larger. (As you had been using brush tool for fine tuning, make sure that
hardness is zero & opacity is 100%) then click on eye. Then press "Q". Then press Ctrl+
Shift+l (Eye not One) then press Ctrl+J to add adjustment layer. Click Filter>Sharpness>USM.
I used 37/0.2/0 two passes. Press Ctrl+E to remove adjustment layer & have background
layer only.

Then File>Save for Web & devices to adjust size under 200kb.

That's all Folks :)

Uncle Gus:D
BTW: Robert O'Toole's APTAS-1 and Artie's Digital Basics download is a great place to start. Both found on Artie's web site http://www.birdsasart.com

[Jeni Williams]

Super shot Denise - love the preening.

:eek::eek::eek: Mind explaining that in English, OOM Gus???:cool:

[denise ippolito]

Excellent Gus .Will attempt myself

[Gus Hallgren]

Jeni, that's in American English, sorry I don't know African English . . .

Uncle Gus aka OOM Gus (the Afrikaans word for "uncle", often applied fondly to Paul Kruger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kruger), president of the Transvaal Republic

[Declan Troy]

Perhaps a minor point, unless you are a Mallard, but that ain't no dame. This is a male/drake Mallard in eclipse plumage. Female Mallards have orange bills with dark markings. Males have yellow bills.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I didn't know this either Denise!!!