Duck

[billweckel]

My first submission . A duck in Santa Rosa Sound (Florida), taken just before sunset yesterday. Nothing exotic—I just liked the white splotches behind his eyes.

Adjustments: sharpen, de-noise and crop in Aperture

Info: ISO 250, f/5.6, 1/500sec, 400mm lens, natural light

Thanks for looking!

Bill

[Doug West]

Looks like you did a fine job. The exposure looks fine and the whites aren't blown out.
The duck is also nice and sharp.

The only thing I'd play with is the crop. The duck is to centered. I would try and add some
canvas to the left and take just a little off the left. You might also have to crop some off
the bottom to move him toward the bottom of the frame.

Doug

[Leigh Cojocar]

Is this a Mallard? I've never seen them with a white head before turning green.

[John Chardine]

Hi Bill- Big welcome to BPN and to our ETL forum here. You will get a lot out of your BPN experience, by viewing images and other people's comments, posting your own images and commenting on others' images.

This is a great first post. The image is sharp and the colour is great. By the shadows you can tell that the sun was quite far around to your right- probably too far because you have a bright side to the subject and a shadow side. More direct lighting is better. The sun does not have to be behind you either. If it's off to one side say 10-20° (phase angle), you get nice even light and enhanced small detail. Although the whites in the neck do not appear to be blown, there isn't much if any detail there. The other thing I'll mention is that it works very well if you try to get a low as you can and into the realm of your subject.

[billweckel]

Apologies for my tardy reply: Thank you all for the encouraging words and critique! This was shot at sunset from a dock in the last few minutes of light. I would have liked to have caught them sooner, but was focusing on a Heron at the time. The ducks were sort of last minute. The crop isn't the greatest, now that I've had time to look at it a bit more. I would have liked to have gotten lower but it was wet and dirty and I wasn't dressed for the occasion. I've done a lot of shooting over the past two weeks and now understand the need for flash fill, which never occurred to me prior. I didn't realize the a flash could be used to effect on something that far away.

I'm assuming this is a Mallard or a Mallard-Peking hybrid? Just a guess - the only birds I know much about are Psittacines.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/billweckel/

Thanks again!

Bill