Mallard- wing flap

[Enrique Patino]

went out today to take advantage of the first decent light in ages... hope you like it



7D, 700mm @ f/7.1, 1/640, ISO 800, manual, HH, copped for comp.

[dankearl]

Another terrific photo, Enrique.
O might move it a tad left but that is it, i like the vegetation a lot and a perfect head turn.

[keith mitchell]

Enrique the muted soft colours make this image for me, water and BG merge together so well, just shows that so called common species can make excellent images.

Keith.

[christopher galeski]

very nice,like the pose and light,some nice detail.

[Marina Scarr]

Killer pose, angle and water. There is a color cast on the white under the wings. The whites there are looking a tad green/yellow. This is an easy fix with a color balance adjustment.

[Enrique Patino]

Killer pose, angle and water. There is a color cast on the white under the wings. The whites there are looking a tad green/yellow. This is an easy fix with a color balance adjustment.

Thanks Marina. I did notice that, as I worked on the "lights" of this image. I used the sponge tool to desaturate this area. But, are we sure that there is no hint of yellow on the "white" feathers under the wing? Are we sure it is pure white? The yellow became more prominent as I reduced the luminosity of the brightest pixels in this image... and I opted to leave it like that intentionally. Not sure how "accurate" this color is, but ...

[Shawn Zierman]

Super wing flap. Excellent low angle work. I love all the earth tones. The underwing looks funky as Marina pointed out...I'm not bandwagon jumping here, just saying it looks off color and brightness wise. You did a great job freezing the important part of the action at the stated shutter speed. That little bit of bright green vegetation to the right of the bird, slightly in the background, could be removed...only because it stands out so prominently in an otherwise earth toned scene...

[Enrique Patino]

Super wing flap. Excellent low angle work. I love all the earth tones. The underwing looks funky as Marina pointed out...I'm not bandwagon jumping here, just saying it looks off color and brightness wise. You did a great job freezing the important part of the action at the stated shutter speed. That little bit of bright green vegetation to the right of the bird, slightly in the background, could be removed...only because it stands out so prominently in an otherwise earth toned scene...

Thanks Shawn. Now I am curious about the "real color" of the underwing of the female mallard... according to this site, the underwing is cream/white color. Same here. But other sites simply say it is "white"...so who knows?? (hopefully somebody does )

As for the green, I would agree... but didn't someone say that when possible, include green on a bird photograph? .. easily removed, if desired...

thanks again

[Shawn Zierman]

Would you be willing to post an out of camera image of this shot?.. Only for comparison purposes. I always reserve the right to be wrong, (as I frequently am), but just curious to see how close you were on your post processing compared to straight out of camera?
I'm sure someone did say that bit about including green in an image...it was just an idea :)

[Enrique Patino]

maybe there is a yellow cast... looking at the green in this (bad) monitor ... will see when I get home tonight...

[Enrique Patino]

I will post the original when I get home Shawn... Thanks!

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the wing position, low angle, sharpness, details and composition. I would clone out the green bit as well, underwing noted. Great overall colours. Excellent image Enrique.

[Enrique Patino]

this is the full frame image w/o any corrections Shawn. All I did was to export it using LR 5 default settings - "as shot", resize to 1200px, restrict size to 400kb, and standard sharpening for web display... all with LR 5 from the original .CR2 file.

[Shawn Zierman]

Wow. Dramatic difference in underwing brightness and tone. Hope you can see it as well on your end. Thanks for the repost, I much prefer the vibrancy in the underwing in the repost compared to the original.

[Enrique Patino]

Wow. Dramatic difference in underwing brightness and tone. Hope you can see it as well on your end. Thanks for the repost, I much prefer the vibrancy in the underwing in the repost compared to the original.

I can see a huge difference, and I understand your preference.

I wish I knew how to enhance the detail that is available and "viewable" in the underwing without changing so much of the brightness/tonal differences that result from my PP methods. The repost has no PP done to it... anywhere in the image...

So Shawn, do you like the detail in the underwing in the OP, just not the brightness and tone?

thanks for your interest and comments.

[Holger Leyrer]

... hope you like it

Oh yes, i like it. Wonderful action pose. I love the details and the low angle. The repost looks very great.

[Shawn Zierman]

The detail on the underwing in the repost looks great to me. I think I prefer the repost because it looks much more like what I've seen as far tonality when hen mallards wing flap in decent light quality like this. You make great images btw!

[Enrique Patino]

Thank you very much for your comments. I had definitively over-processed the OP by a long shot.

I added blue in WB as the first step on my workflow .They I proceeded to PP with caution ().

it must be the reflection of the color of the water and surroundings - as you can tell the image is predominantly brown-yellow. I could not get rid of the creamy tones on the underwing. Hope you like it. I am going to print it as a 12X18 on textured matte paper and see what it looks like... I personally like to see detail in the whites, so... I went for a bit more detail than the image on pane #13

[Enrique Patino]

I printed a small version to check and it is too dark... now looking here, it need to be lightened a bit. Man oh man, I am getting schooled...