Mallard pair

[Enrique Patino]

taken this morning just before sunrise at a local park.



7D, 500mm @ f/5.0, 1/500, ISO 800, 54% of the original pixels.

Comments welcome

[Doug Brown]

Your composition is quite good, and I like the pano crop. Head angles are nice on both birds. Details in the male are a little soft.

[Enrique Patino]

Thanks Doug. You are right. The male was slightly OOF. This is good as it forces me to think (ask) ..."is there another adjustment needed before I am done?"

I did a second round of sharpening on the male and I think it improves it a bit. Not sure if it is good enough for printing... perhaps not!

[Daniel Cadieux]

Repost is better on the male, that extra sharpening helped with the fact it was just out of dof range. I like the crop, the low-ish angle, and both head angles. I also like the oof vegetation above.

With a sharp file and good processing it can sometimes be surprising how far we can push our images for web and print, although limitations are obvious too as far as size goes.

[Marina Scarr]

Unique composition on these two, and I like it. We would normally see the male and his glorious colors showing off, but I like the way he is being humble here and allowing her to shine! Love how the environment envelopes the birds.