Bufflehead Running On Water.

These guys are so much fun to photograph. When they take off to fly they run quite rapidly on water while flapping their wings just as fast until they get enough momentum and lift to take to the air. Kind of like loons do, but much less labour intensive. Not my favorite wing position, but the churning feet more than make it up for me:S3:

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/3200s., f/5.6, ISO 800, natural light, handheld, a bit more than FF (added a bit of canvas at right the re-cropped at left for comp), darkened the pupil, lightened the iridescence.

Great moment captured, Daniel. One of our favorite ducks.

Daniel:

When I first glanced at the thumbnail, I thought it was a common loon taking off! Very similar feel, but a lot faster lift off.

The arching trail of water, head down pose, great. As a pano kind of guy, I might give a little more in front, but very fun as is.

Cheers

Randy

Yes another good one. As mentioned - more in front would clinch it for me, and you dont want to lose the splash.
By the way- do you "stretch the exta canvas or just build it up?- I usually stretch mine.
John

Very unusual. I actually like the wing position for this, as it sort of mimics the "pulled up" position of the legs, the wings to me seem "pulled up" as well. As to the composition, I did a "hand crop" cutting off a bit on the right and find that for me this even works with the duck running right out of the frame. Gives me the feeling of full left-to-right motion, starting at the splash. No issues with your addition and comp, I think that works very well also. Funny how we can each find so many very good ways to present. All starts, of course, with a danged good image in the first place@

Daniel, Another great action shot. I agree with Bill about a small change in Comp might improve this fine image. The feet and splash really make it.

Ed

The timing on this is excellent. The legs are in just the right position to really give the feeling of a hard sprint to reach take-off speed and the wings are prefeclty palced to not block anypart of its body - as Bill says they complent the legs as well.
As for the low angle...brilliant.

I like the running pose, trailing water, exposure control, details and I would add a little more room in front of the duck. Excellent image Daniel!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by John Robinson

Yes another good one. As mentioned - more in front would clinch it for me, and you dont want to lose the splash.
By the way- do you "stretch the exta canvas or just build it up?- I usually stretch mine.
John

---

Hi John, sorry I did not respond quicker than this! If the BG is smooth I'll sometimes "stretch" it, but I usually just use the clone stamp and fill in the newly added canvas. BTW, I find the clone stamp's "show overlay" feature quite annoying most of the time, but really valuable for this type of image manipulation.