Female Lesser Scaup

[Thomas Barbin]

A female lesser scaup in Victoria.
This was shot on a Canon 7D mark ii with a 400mm f/5.6L lens. 1/2000 | f/8.0 | ISO 640

I look forward to hearing any critique and advice you might have!

Thomas

[Isaac Grant]

Nice focus and details. Colors look great as does the water. Very nice light. Bird is riding high on the water as well which is a plus. The face crescent looks a little too hot. I would select that and reduce the highlights and exposure. Might even try running a little NIK detail extractor on it as well to see if you can bring some of the fine feather details back. Also think it is a little unfortunate that the majority of the water that is bordering the flanks of the duck or out of focus and raised up and you didn't have that in focus bubbly water that is in front of the bird.

[Thomas Barbin]

Thanks for the advice Isaac. I personally was happy with how the out of focus water in front of the bird looked, but now I'm curious to know what it would have looked like if the water was in focus all around the bird. I agree with the hot crescent, I'll take it back into Photoshop to try and retrieve some detail. I'll also have to look into the Nik collection, I've heard it mentioned a couple of times now recently.

Thanks,
Thomas

[Gerhard Weldhagen]

I agree with Isaac on the facial highlight - I would tone it down selectively with NIK Viveza. The rest of the image looks good and the back ground exhibits the bird very well. TFS.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Great profile pose, and my type of low angle. I love the colours. Well exposed, and sharp. I agree with Isaac about the water running along the flanks - it would have been neat to have that wavelet come down at time of exposure. As for the white crescent - I have lots of luck using the burn tool for stuff like that. Use a soft brush, say 30 % or so, and a very low opacity in the 8 to 10% range, set to "midtones" and brush those whites in small circles while keeping the mouse button pressed. Repeat 2=3 times if needed.

[Thomas Barbin]

Thanks for the comments! I haven't been able to get to any editing lately, but I'll work on the highlight when I can and post here when done.