Portrait of a Gadwall

[Paul Guris]

Nothing fancy, but I am looking for comments to see if I'm on the right track with my photos and post-processing.

Nikon D90
80-400mm f4.5-5.6
360mm (540mm equivalent)
f/7.1
ISO 560
1/1000
-0.33 EV

[Ray Rozema]

Good eye contact. good detail Exposure looks good. Would crop a little off the right and add a little room to the left. Might remove one of the catchlights and clean up the water upper left.

Very good
Ray

[Joel Eade]

Hi Paul,

Agree with Ray's comments, in addition I think another round of sharpening would be helpful especially on the head.

Joel

[John Chardine]

Hi Paul- Definitely on the right track. Agree with the comments on composition and sharpening above. I think with some off the right, the left may look OK. A lower camera angle would have been nice but I know it's not always possible.

[Doug Brown]

+1 to what Ray said. Like the head angle and exposure.

[Paul Guris]

Thanks for the feedback. With swimming waterfowl I like to keep the wake behind the bird, but I'm always a bit confused as to how to best present it or if it's even worth presenting.

[Paul Guris]

In tweaking the photo as suggested, I just fixed the second "catchlight". When I blew up the photo, I realized it was actually a tiny water droplet that must have fallen off of his head!

Thanks again for the help. (You'll be hearing from me again.)

[Julie Kenward]

Paul, what a lovely image! I know what you mean about keeping the wake in the image with the bird. It can be done but it does usually mean going against the "rules of photography" in order to do it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The most successful images I've had with keeping the wake was presenting them with a pano crop - room up front, room behind for the wake and not alot of room top or bottom (usually put the bird about 1/3 from the bottom horizontally and leave 2/3 above him).

My one issue here is the water...it needs a lot of clean up in order to keep from drawing your viewer's attention away from the bird, the wake and the water in general. We as viewers like to see clean, pristine water most of the time and that means blowing the image up to 100% and going after all the little specs. The great advantage to taking the time to do this is it will make for a cleaner print in the long run.