This was a first for me on film. I was so excited to see this guy. What a beautiful bird. Wish I had a better composition but he was mixed among other birds and I did the best I could to get some shots of him by himself. Have several other shots of him with better HA but thought this was a unique pose. Caught him enjoying the sun and preening. I shot this using 7D, 300 + 2X TC, ISO 320, f/8.0, 1/800. C&C greatly appreciated.
Excellent shot Don, I'm enjoying the preening pose here. It really looks like he's enjoying the warmth of the sun! As Doug said, the OOF wave is a little distracting. Maybe if you remove the specular highlights it may be less distracting. That said, you've got a great HA here, excellent lighting and exposure - not to mention the low angle :-).
Exposure looks good to me, and I love that blue BG. Sharpness doesn't look too bad either. F8 worked well for you. Comp isn't bad but I may have preferred seeing the bird on the right side of the frame instead of the left. Did you take a look in the educational forum about the rules of thirds and where to consider placing your bird/subject in terms of which way it is facing, etc? There are times to break the rules also, but in this case I think the rules work well.
I wonder why your thumbnail wasn't showing up for me....Did you upload your picture through BPN?
I had a hard time getting solo shots of the ducks. Not that a lot of ducks is a bad thing, but it sure made getting good compositions tricky. I wasn't aware I could load photo through BPN.
Redhead
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