I managed to get away from the office and enjoy the mergies antics at a local lake. This fellow had just stolen the fish from another and was flying back into the water.
These ducks are so tricky to expose for. I converted the RAW in LR5 but was totally disappointed with the results so tried converting it in DPP 4 and I am very pleased with the results. I had to lift the shadows on the head to +3.
In LR5 this resulted in a faded grey look but in DPP the colors were maintained nicely.
Canon 1DX 600mm II 1.4X III
ISO 800 SS 1/3200 F 6.3
Cropped to 60% FF. I tried cropping to a true square and I liked it but decided to keep a more traditional comp and kept the duck centered.
Comments and critiques always learned from and appreciated with thanks,
Gail
Terrific action. Look's like he just came back from the frozen fish market. Love the dangling foot almost touching the water. Yes, they are difficult to expose. You did a nice job on the recovery.
Hi Gail quite unusual pose and awkward looking at the same time.
You did well with the exposure and the recovery , i like overall tone and color palette .
I am not too fuzzed about the central placement of the subject .
Excellent action shot, Gail.
This is a huge fish.
I wonder if he had swallowed it.
About the composition; it looks good as is but I would have pushed the bird towards left from the center if it was mine.
Great scene, love the foot and the fish. With your fine iq and small presentation for web here, personally, I would come in tighter and de-center the mergie. Such a hard subject to photograph well and you have done him proud.
How cool! I'm OK with the central comp here. That big red foot just above the water is pretty neat. I get the feeling the image may need a touch of CCW rotation.
Very nice Gail. Fantastic look in the mergansers eyes. Great feather detail and that flatfish adds so much to the image. Good work and thanks for sharing this
An extraordinary capture, that's for sure. I like the the repost - it instantly grabbed my attention, whereas in the original post my eye wandered around to see if there was anything extra I had missed. Regards, Ian.
I totally agree with Ian. The repost is much better as it directs my eye right to the bird and it's catch. Perfect time for a square crop. I like the running pose, the frost around the fish and the Beautiful red bill on this guy. Nice frame Gail
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Common Merganser with fish
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