Hooded merganser and the messy water

This nice hooded merganser was captured at the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary in southwest Michigan. It was a fairly dark morning, the pond he likes is well shaded from the low fall sun. Water in this particular area had lots of small bright spots of debris, and using the healing brush, clone stamp, etc. would have taken a loooong time.

So, I used a combination of noise reduction and the dust/scratch filter to tone down the water debris. There are still some light marks visible, but going further on the filter really made the water look bad. I didn't want to lose all the texture.

D700 500mm f/4 at f/5.6 700mm with 1.4 TC ISO 640 1/400s Gitzo/wimb.

Post: Selective sharpening, multiply blend mode on breast and hood whites, substantial crop from original.

I will post the original in a follow up to show what I started with.

Certainly would appreciate any advice on how better to handle this fine debris.

Cheers

Randy

This is the original raw file converted to jpeg, no processing

Randy. this is a nice capture. I like the HA and the way you cropped it from the original.

Cool bird and very nice crop. I have never had the opportunity to photography this bird, but I can imagine that it presents a exposure challenge which you obviously handled well.
Re. the water clean up, I would also evict some of those bigger yellow dots and especially the white one by the bill. Love that bright eye. Thanks.

Very cool looking Head gear he is wearing... loved the eye contact too...

Hi Randy
Lovely shot.nice pose and looking.congrats!
.TFS

Asad

Randy, I would also clone out the larger dots. This has excellent exposure & I like the crop. Well captured.

Randy, the shape of their heads have always amazed me, and have only ever seen these guys on this site. Good job with the exposure, and good job on cleaning up the water. I like the water texture, together with the colours.

Very nice job on the water with the technique you choose Randy! I think that I would just go a little further with a clone tool set at 0 hardness, 50% opacity and spot-fitting size and sampling near the spot, reduce or remove some of the spots that remain around the bird. With this clone tool setting, you can really control the outcome, as I'm sure you know! I Love the shape of the white patch on his head!

The answer to your question is simple. The skimmers are turned off now in my koi pond until next spring. I will show up on Saturday morning and we can both place them on the pond, done. I still think we need a giant soft box :)

Seriously, most of my images from last weekend are just like this, we need some rain to clear the water up!

Gary.

Beautiful image Randy! Great exposure, sharpness and composition.