I encountered this beautiful gal a couple of weeks ago roosting on the frozen ground. I was surprised to be able to crawl almost right up to her as they tend to be quite wary around these parts. I got some interesting full body images too but thought this tight portrait was rather nice...
Canon 7D + 100-400L @400mm, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/320s., f/8, ISO 800, natural light, handheld, FF, a bit of eye doctoring as the eye was distractingly glazed over by reflections, an odd straw-like piece of vegetation awkwardly sticking upwards out of the base of the bill cloned out.
Indeed unusual to get in this close on a woodie, at least in my area! Excellent shooting angle, snow adds a different feel.
Sharp on the head, and well exposed because the eye ring is often blown out. Soft light helped you here.
In a perfect world, would prefer a bit more DOF for the body, but looking at your settings, I think you made the best compromise possible without going to really high ISO.
Beautiful portrait of this lovely lady. I had never noticed some of the red and green colors you've captured here (but then, I've never gotten so close to a Wood Duck. Well done. Love the light, detail, POV.
She is indeed, a beautiful gal! You captured great feather detail and colors that softly glow. How fortunate she let you so close. I like this tight & intimate portrait.
I really like crisp clear close-up portraits and this one is very nice. f8 covered the duck pretty well and the focus point was right on the eye for sure. Like the look to the eye and the yellow eye ring. I remember a member giving you a hard time about your eye work a while back but I wanted to say that I like it in your images. :)
I really like tight intimate portraits like this - there is a lot of detail that we usually don't get to see.
I like the point of view here - you must have been right on the ground - that makes it quite special. You must have been working at the minimum focussing distance.
Female Wood Duck.
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