bufflehead questions

[Jared Lloyd]

In attempt to keep the details in the iridecent sheen of the head and maintain feather details in the body, I blew out the highlights on this buffleheads head.

Does this distract from the photograph? Is there anything that can be done to minimize the damage?

thanks,
Jared

[Terry Sohl]

It does distract a bit for me, but the colors on the bufflehad are wonderful. No detail left that can be saved from the RAW?

Neat pose and head turn on this little guy.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I took a look in PS...the whites are not as blown as it appears (mostly only the contour of the patch), but the details are lacking. If you use RAW you can revisit this image in your RAW converter and see if the details are recovereable. They may be more apparent in the full-size version of the image. In situations like this I like to expose for the whites and let fill-flash do its' job on the darks. On the bright side the reflected ear patch looks great.

I have a question of my own about Buffleheads: How the heck did you get so close to one?? :-)

[Dan Brown]

Jared, very nice shot of the duck! I tried to recover some detail from the white, but Daniel is right, the jpeg has no detail visible but the white seems to be ok. In my repost I really cheated and cloned a little detail from the flank onto the head:D I think that with the harsher light, you will have a tough time with this much contrast, best to shoot early in the morning and late in the evening or on a cloudy day:)

[Jared Lloyd]

Heres the fix. I went back into raw and tweaked the "recover." I then went in into PS, selected the area, and used shadow/highlight. Is this any better for you?

As to how I managed to get so close to a bufflehead - pure luck. I could make up a story about lying in the marsh covered by blind material for 6 hours gritting my teeth through an endless barage of blood thirsty mosquitoes the size of small humingbirds. Cottomouths floating by just inches from my face as I held out and waited for this one evenecent moment. But alas - it was just luck. This was taken at Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. I was making my way to the waterfowl impoundment when I passed a small "turtle" pond along the trail. There were 3 females and 1 male bufflehead in the pond. Two of the females and this drake all flew off - seperately and in different direction. The third however stayed put and so I hoped that the male might return for his lady. 5 minutes later, he flew back in. After about 10 more mins he relaxed and proceeded to continue on about his business 15 ft away from my 200-400 coupled with a 1.4tc.

[Fabs Forns]

Lovely head turn and colors, I see you had a bit of an issue with the whites, can't tell much on this laptop, but I'm sure you were able to recoup :)