I found a male Green-winged Teal roaming a local pond, a pond that has diminished quite a bit the last couple of years due to invading reeds...and this has made the normally wary teal forced to swim closer to the boardwalk. Waiting patiently for it to come closer during its round of the pond it came to stop just in front of me...and of course only when I was composed in tight that it decided to do something interesting such as a stretch! I really like the way the image turned out though, an intimate view of the said behaviour.
Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/320s., f/5.6, ISO 800, natural light, handheld (lying flat on the boardwalk), slightly cropped left and bottom, but canvas added at top as the top-most feather was just about touching the edge, a few spots in the water removed via spot removal tool, worked on the eye's highlight in the reflection...it was a long vertical streak at first (clone tool used).
Strong image with lots of interesting details, aided by the unusual pose. Well exposed. Very sharp, almost too sharp in some areas (cheek). Personal taste on that.
In a perfect world, a bit smoother reflection, but very hard to get.
This is one of these moments when your 100-400 would have come in handy!!
I really like the up close view of this skittish duck. You have beautiful feather detail.
Extra points for getting the male!
gail
Very pleasing....I love when a bird makes eye contact with you and then does this. To me, it shows that they are not afraid. Your exposure is perfect for those whites. If this were mine, I'd lighten the shadow in the copper water in the upper left.
Green-winged Teal Stretching In Liquid Bronze.
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