Colorado Duck Pond

[David Stephens]

This is a pond at a wetland where I do much of my bird photography. This is about 30-minutes after sunrise, looking to the South. I took this with my Canon 5D MkII with the EF 24-105mm f4L IS in aperture priority, at f5.0, f4 with ISO100 and +1EV, resulting in 1/500-sec. The RAW conversion was done DxO's Optics Pro 5.x, primarily using the defaults, adjusting light level and saturation pushed up just a few points.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2705/4066118059_42029da784_b.jpg

Critique and suggestions are appreciated.

Dave

[Dave Mills]

Hi David, Nicely composed image along with pleasing early light and good detail in the snow. Only thing that bothers me a bit is the bright sun on the extreme left. Otherwise well handled!

[David Stephens]

Dave, thanks for the feedback.

I was torn about the sun at the left. The rays struck me as attractive, so I was trying to get them. Perhaps I should have moved around to the left to see if I could get the rays in without the direct sun. I didn't need my GND for the sky in genereal, but it might have helped control that sun a bit.

Dave

[Robert Amoruso]

David,

To help with the high contrast I recommend a reverse s-curve using a luminosity blending mode so as not to skew the colors. This brought out the more subtle details in the white of the snow and clouds. I then cropped the sun out (agree with Dave as it just distracts here). That made the crop square which I am not apposed to but did not feel it worked for this image so took some more off the top.

I feel the crop helps to strengthen the curve of the water and removes the sun distraction.

See http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20434 for my tutorial on the reverse s-curve.

[David Stephens]

Thanks Robert. That does indeed look nice.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi David,
Didn't realize I missed this one earlier today! Good advice given above and your self assesment of concentrating more on the rays than the actual sun is a very good one......no amount of ND stacking would help! An alternative is to try and re-process the same image for the sun.....see if you can get more detail out of it (my bet is no because of the extreme difference in this case )....but worth a peek. Also remember that the smaller opening.....f16 or 22 will give you a better sunburst!

[Dennis "Curly" Buchner]

I like Roberts comp with just the rays shining though. Very nice