Long Tailed Duck

[gail bisson]

Canon 1DX
F 600mm and 1.4X
1/1250@ f 7.1 ISO 400
~ 25% crop
I like how the BG colors echo the duck's breeding plumage
PP: Crop, levels, boosted saturation, DE at 3% to bird, USM to JPEG

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Gail,

Greetings. I particularly like the engaging eye contact and the alternating dark light bg as it accentuates the subject. The color is superb and unifies the entire image, if the whites are a bit hot for my taste. Beautiful none-the-less.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Marina Scarr]

What a lovely duck portrait, Gail! I completely agree about the color scheme working very nicely here.

[HadiAnsari]

Hi Gail.color is nice.
TFS

[Richard Flack]

Really awesome Gail. I love the mood of this photo. And agree regarding the colour scheme. Awesome. TFS

[Steve Large]

Hi Gail,
Nice to see one of these guys in their breeding plumage. We usually get them here on Vancouver Island in winter when their heads are mostly white and they kind of look like hush puppies with the black ears. Love the light and the feather detail and the nice low camera angle.

Steve

[Grace Scalzo]

This is like a gorgous tapestry.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Gail, super low shooting angle, and what a great HA too. Love the light cast over the head, sharp with good feather detail, and that BG is simply stunning. This is just a personal thing, but if this were mine, I would take a bit off the bottom. Well captured.

[MohsenVahedipour]

Very lovely colors with great details & POV. TFS

[Girish Prahalad]

lovely angle & the BG pattern is very unique. details & exposure looks good.
must want to extract some details in the the whites where the tail starts.

[christopher galeski]

not much I can add,loverly image,love that BG.

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Hi Gail,
Excellent low angle and what a gorgeous bird. The eye contact is very engaging and the image has a very nice mood.
I'll be the odd one out, but I find the black in the bg a tad distracting - would have worked better for me had it not been merging with the bird's head.
The whites look a tad hot on my monitor.

[Tim King]

Beautiful photo, Gail. I love the 3 shadows in the BG. Fine job.

[Steve Canuel]

Very nice Gail. One of the nicest shots I've seen of this species. I really like the warm rich colors.

[Satish Ranadive]

Magnificent Duck portrait with beautiful HA and long tail. Wonderful color scheme and composition.

Regards,
Satish.