A present for you....

[Rosl Roessner]

A pair of Red-crested Pochards.
He gave her a lot of presents today.....

I think, she felt quite good with such a nice guy....
Mark III / 500/4 + 1.7 TC

1/320 sec / f 4 (+TC) ISO 1000
- 2/3 Exp. corr.

[Fabs Forns]

What a sweet scene, Rosl, they sure look good. I think it may need a clock wise rotation.

[Gus Cobos]

Very pleasing image Rosl,
I especially love the soft colors of your ducks, and the smooth earth tones of your background. The action between these two is superb...:)

[David Kennedy]

I agree with Fabs that a CW rotation would help this image. Also, it seems to me that a little more of the foreground (the reflections) and a little less of the "sky" may have formed a stronger composition. The action in this image is very good. Thanks for sharing!

[Robert Amoruso]

Rosl,

Great interaction captured here. You created the image shooting low which heightens the emotion and strengthens the composition.

The whites are a bit hot so I download the image and tried a shadow/highlight adjustment using PSCS3. I set the shadow sliders to zero. THe highlight slider I set as follows: Amount - increased it until I got better detail in the whites on the right duck but after I set radius to zero. Tonal range at 25%. Al set min-tone contrast to 25% which gave he image a nice boost and made it pop more.

I then cropped down from the top to give the couple a more intimate look. With your original, you would be able to do a better job with the whites then I did here. The S/H adjustment left the whites a bit muddy looking.

Really nice work and thanks for sharing it here. I hope to see more.

[Brian Wong]

What a sweet scene, Rosl, they sure look good. I think it may need a clock wise rotation.

Hi Rosi!

I love the sweet interaction. I always enjoy your images, as you always somehow seem to add emotion and feelings to them. I like how Robert's idea seems to emphasize your intimacy even more.

Fabs and David already mentioned the rotation. One very easy way for your consideration, is that reflections are always vertical from your point of view (however, due to the nature of rectilinear lens and various focal length lenses, there may be distortion, convergence or divergence near the edges ... but no need to worry about it as long as the subject is near the center of the image!). I hope you do not mind that I added this vertical box to your image just as an example. I'm sure you have tried out the PS "measure tool"?? Super cool, quick and easy!

[Rosl Roessner]

Thanks to all for you for working with my picture.
I really love BPN because I can learn so much from you! It's fantastic.

Thank you Robert and Brian for uploading your versions. I like them a lot.
I really like the different cropping with less "Sky". That is a big difference.
And I really love the work with the highlights, that Robert did! This is very much better! Special the diffenerence you can see at the head and the eye of both birds!

I think I can improve my images alot if I spend more time with the postprocessing and with thinking twice about every image.

I know the measure tool and also the easy way to rotate a picture in Lightroom. The truth is, I did not realise it before you told me!
Thank you for helping me to become a better photographer!