I am a Wood Duck, don't you know!

[Randy Stout]

I went to Cleveland last weekend and participated in a workshop run by Matthew Studebaker. He did a very good job showing the best locations and where to be at what time. The weather was cold and rainy most of the time, but the fall color was good, and the wood ducks were plentiful.

Not as common as you might think to see them perched.

D700 500mm f/4 1.4x TC f/7.1 1/320 ISO 640 EC -.7 SB800 with beamer -1.3 Gitzo, sitting in the mud

Advice always welcome

Cheers

Randy

[Kiran Khanzode]

Never seen one, I love the 'perch' and the direct eye contact. Would love to photograph one someday.

[Aidan Briggs]

Nice pose, overcast light, and BG. The colors seem a bit muted for a Wood Duck, maybe a bit more saturation?

[Eric Virkler]

Excellent shot. Love the background and the diagonal from the branch. The only thing I wish you'd have done differently would have been to call me and let me know where they were so I could have joined you.:) I've wanted to shoot wood ducks for years.

Well done.

Eric
Faces of Nature Photography
www.ericjvirkler.com (http://www.ericjvirkler.com)

[Ilija Dukovski]

Very nice, cant' wait to get some of these guys in the coming days. I like
the pose, the feet are great, BG and perch provide nice setting.
Agree about bit more saturation. I think going back to ACR and sliding the
blacks to the right a bit more might be the thing to do here.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Lovely duck.
Love the HA and smooth BG. The perch seems large for my taste but that's about it. I would sharpen the eye a little more.

[Doug Brown]

What a great look at the webbed feet. I agree about a saturation boost. -2/3 seems like a lot of negative EC for such muted light; how was your exposure in the RAW file?

[Harshad Barve]

Beautiful expo and compo , killer BG

Would love to photograph one someday.

Ditto Kiran here
TFS

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Randy, I have seen these guys before, but never perched. You have exposed this very well, and agree a little more sat, and maybe some more contrast will work. I like the angled perch, and the BG is just great. Well captured.

[David Fletcher]

Done well with this Randy. Killer bg, nice pose and sharpness, and as suggestions a boost may take it up a level. (pun intended)

[Arthur Morris]

Everything is perfect but for the head. It needed to be on a bit straighter (with regards to the body angle...) And it could use a bit more sharpening. Is the perch a set-up? Was this image created at Chagrin?

And I agree that a bit more contrast and SAT overall would improve this one.

My favorite parts of the image? The breast and the feet.

[paul leverington]

Randy--Sweet shot on this one. Head angle is off ever so slightly but not enough to kill the shot--the feet showing makes it and you got pretty good irridesence in the head. You probably could of halved your speed for a little more DOF so as to get the tail a little more in focus. Seems like f11 makes a pretty good choice much of the time to get the whole bird in focus---not nearly easily done though most of the time. This is a great pose shot of the magnificent duck. Well done!

other nits covered.

Paul

[Randy Stout]

Thanks everyone for the commments:

Doug, the raw file had a few hot pixels in the whites which I treated with the recovery slider in ACR. I needed the -2/3 EC to keep them from getting worse. I was using flash also , which kept me doing a balancing act on exposure.

I do agree about the saturation. The light was soft at that instant, so I was trying to accurately display the image as I saw it at the moment, a bit soft and subdued.

I have a few blocked blacks with the shadow slider all the way at 0, so no room to tweak that setting.

Paul: You are right about the f stop. F/11 would have been better, at the risk of very slow shutter speed. Yes, I could have pushed the ISO significantly with the D700.

Artie: Yes, North Chagrin Reservation was the site. This was a dead tree that had fallen into the water all by itself.

One of my processing goals was to minimize the "flashed look" from the fill. I think the balance turned out pretty well. I was pondering the bright water droplets on the belly, which were brought out by the flash, and probably wouldn't have shown with no fill flash. It would be easy to burn them in just a tad. If anyone has an opinion on this point, let me know.

Repost addresses the major comments about saturation and sharpness. I didn't tweak the contrast as it caused more blocking of the blacks and blowing of the highlights.

Thanks again.

Randy

[Ed Erkes]

Gorgeous shot!! Perfectly composed. I've got no problem with the head angle or depth of field. I think the original post better captures the soft lighting conditions that were actaully there at the time. Great shot!! I wish it were mine.

Ed Erkes

[Arsdel Fluesmeier]

Great shot of a wood duck. Sharpness and color are very good. A good, simple shot.

[Randy Stout]

Thanks Ed and Arsdel.
It was nice to meet you Ed. Look forward to some of your images soon.

Randy