Ducks including this female Ring-neck will often rear-up and flap their wings. It's a challenge to capture this and those who have tried can attest that the bird often looks ungainly at any particular moment. Anyway, here's an attempt at capturing this behaviour at the Sackville Waterfowl Park this evening. The head angle is not great and I don't like the sidelighting creating a dark face on the bird; but it is what it is, as someone I know occasionally says!
40D, 500 mm f4, 1.4x tcII
June 21, 2008 5:30:12 PM
exposure program: Aperture Priority
ISO speed: 640
shutter speed: 1/1600
aperture: f5.6
exposure bias: +1.0 (lots of backlight from the water)
metering: Pattern
light source: Auto
flash: ON - Beamer, no compensation
Last edited by John Chardine; 06-21-2008 at 06:24 PM.
Reason: posted test version of image originally
Definitely not easy to capture. I like the angle and wing flap. I agree regarding the sidelight and may sharpen a bit less. As for the composition, I'm wondering if more room at the bottom would improve the image in order to include where the body touches the water.
Thanks Axel. Unfortunately this is all of the lower part of the bird that I have!! I had the 1.4x tc on and rather than bail out decided to capture the top half of the bird.
Hey John, I was shocked not to see a gannet! Good self critique. The clipped wings are a bit problematic but yes, it is what it is. Darkening the mid-tones would like improve the impact...
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Many thanks to all. Here's a retry. I masked out the head (didn't want any darker) and darkened the midtones using Curves and some burning with a big, soft brush. Change is subtle but noticeable. I clipped the left wing on exposure and forgot to mention in the first post that I cropped the right wing a similar amount for symmetry.
Last edited by John Chardine; 06-22-2008 at 08:18 AM.
Reason: remove a word
Better. Whenever you work off angle to the light you introduce a variety of problems...
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
wing stretch
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