Lesser Scaup (aka Bluebill) in Breeding Plumage.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Last Fall I managed some nice photos of male Lesser Scaups, but they were not in prime breeding plumage. Last weekend, however, I went back to the same spot and found a group of them in prime breeding colours. I lay down flat on the wet shore, put on the audio, and this drake immediately bee-lined it straight towards me until it was too close to focus. Quite a beautiful species of duck, well worth getting low, wet and dirty to photograph them at eye-level :-)

Canon 7D + 100-400L @400mm, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/800s., f/7.1, ISO 400 (settings histogram checked on nearby mallards). Slight crop for comp (about 80% FF).

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

They are beautiful ducks, and the colors of the water plays well with his bill. Bright yellow eyes, sharp, well exposed.

I might be tempted to trim a bit off the top, to further emphasize the low shooting angle.

This would lend itself to a vertical comp as well.

Cheers

Randy

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

beautiful pose,low angle.....bg`s colors!!!

[dankearl]

Beautiful colors and the usual top notch processing. Very nice.

[Yves Guillot]

Sweet BG, nice low angle and love the texture of the water. Very well done! Congrats!

[OvidiuCavasdan]

Nice and sharp, great low angle shot, also I like the wave, oof water and distant bg colors.

[Simon Wantling]

I'm a real admirer of your work Daniel. Brilliant picture as usual and really like the low angle. Interesting technique using birds sounds to bring the species in closer. I assume this could work in the uk. Out of interest, how to you play the sounds? I'm thinking I could pop some bird sounds onto my iPhone 4 and play through that. Any advice?

simon

[Daniel Cadieux]

Simon, thanks a bunch!

Here's an article I wrote on the very subject. It is found in the Tutorials and Educational Resources forum here on BPN:
http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/37765-Using-Audio-for-Photographing-Birds-The-Basics

Mind you , this was written before I discovered the joys of ipods, ipads, iphones, smartphones, android, etc... so it should be updated with that but the rest is quite relevant :-)

[Robert Holguin]

Wonderful shot Daniel. I love the low shooting angle and the soft pastel colors. Great pose and excellent light.
Well done.

I read your article on using audio and must say it was very educational.