Brant.

[Daniel Cadieux]

This small (mallard-sized) goose is an arctic breeder and every year during fall migration we can see rafts of them bobbing on the Ottawa River. Unfortunately for the bird photographer the river is very wide and this usually means spotting scope distances away. Fortunately though, almost every year a few individuals make it to land and end up in local parks along the shore of the river. This year, four of them called a particular park home for a couple of days grazing on the manicured grasses before their next leg south-east. They can be rather tame and allow for full-frame portraits.

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/200s., f/5.6, ISO 800, natural light, handheld, FF, a few specks on the head and neck removed (spot removal tool), and a couple of small oof leaves in the BG cloned out.

[Girish Prahalad]

lovely portrait! great details & blacks. BG is extremely pleasing.

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

The rounded shapes and lines work very well, drops add, nice detail in the darks. Good eye as well.

Cheers

Randy

[Doug Brown]

A classic portrait with excellent sharpness and good detail in the blacks.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Daniel, goes to prove it doesn't have to be exotic to achieve a nice Avian portrait.

Good control of the blacks and I like the posture and crop, however I wonder if a sliver off the top may help? Good detail where it counts and the soft, muted green of the BKG works well with the plumage colour. I might be wrong and it could well be the laptop, but I wonder if there is a slight halo creeping in on the curvature of the throat from bill to neck, RHS?

TFS
Steve

[Enrique Patino]

Great all the way around Daniel!

Brants here are significantly larger than mallards... and look a bit different @ the neck and face... different species perhaps?

[Daniel Cadieux]

Thanks guys! Enrique, this species certainly is plumper than mallards when on land, but when swimming a Brant can get lost in a flock of mallards or black ducks to the uninitiated (especially compare to its much larger cousin the Canada Goose)

[Rick Bowers]

Fabulous exposure and detail. Wish I could get that close to this species...