I captured this image at Lake Mirror in the center of Lakeland, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated.
Nikon D7000
Nikon 70-300mm F/4.5-5.6 VR AF-S ED shot at 300mm (450mm FFE)
1/500 F/8 Matrix Metering 0 EV ISO 200 AWB, camera supported by resting on a concrete well
Post Processed in Lightroom 6 and Photoshop Elements 10, cropped out misplaced vegetation in the foreground and smoothed top area of background
Cropped for composition and presentation
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
Handsome frame, Joe. Always nice to get drake and hen in one frame. And always tough to get good HA and critically sharp DOF on both. You did great on the first, and pretty close on the second. I might be tempted to make it a more extreme pano with a little more off the bottom.
I really like the vegetation. I did a brower scroll up from the bottom and like a strong pano comp. Seems like the ducks could use more sharpening. His alert pose is nice.
I really like what you are doing compositionally here. The Wood Duck pair offset diagonally and the lily pad in the foreground. A little lower in the frame may be something to try.
The DOF seems to fall a little short when looking at the eyes of both birds.
You may consider to bring up the saturation of the water and lily pads a tad, and perhaps bring out a very subtle bit more blue from the water.
I like the angled poses, lily pads and composition wise I would take some off the bottom as well. I agree the ducks could use a little more sharpening. Congratulations on getting the male and female in the same frame.
All excellent comments and suggestions above. I'd love to see it with more of a pano crop as Grace suggested as the foreground water does nothing but take up space. I love the overall image design. A contrast mask on both faces would seem to be in order. a
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Mr. and Mrs. Wood Duck...
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