Male Ruddy Duck

[Tim Kuhn]

The day was overcast but with some light coming through, some of my favorite conditions to capture water birds. Found this male ruddy coming into mating plumage. I don't see many of these so I was over joyed with the opportunity.

50D 500 f4 L 1.4 tc 1/500 ISO 800 f/6.3

Tim

[Randy Stout]

Tim:

Nice head angle, very soft light, good catchlight.

Reflection of background in water a bit distracting.

At first I thought the focus was a little soft on head, but I think most of that impression is caused by the head being wet. I would still try another pass of USM.

Perhaps a touch more contrast, to try and seperate the duck from the background a bit. I dont' think it will tolerate much before losing all detail in blacks, but might be worth a try.

Thanks for sharing. They are fun looking ducks.

Randy

[Fabs Forns]

I think you edited this and I see too much contrast now. It is best to leave the original so we can compare with the repost. It may need some CW rotation.

[Tim Kuhn]

This is the original post, I have not edited it.

Tim

[Daniel Cadieux]

This guy is looking rather whimsical and somewhat ratty/dirty...probably had better days!! If you use RAW it may be worth revisiting to see if there is data to recover in the white cheek patch. Depending on which program, the "recovery" slider is sometimes good for this type of processing. I agree it looks like it could use a bit of CW rotation.

[Art Kornienko]

It does seem the contrast is high and the overall bird looks soft to me, not sure why. Might have been nice to see a bit more of the reflection in the water.