Shady Lady - Female Common Goldeneye

[Dorian Anderson]

Since I have you a super tight headshot yesterday, I'm coming back with the other extreme today.

I'm a huge fan of these small-in-frame-type shots, but they're really hard to execute. So, I'm curious
what people think about this one.

As much as I like capturing action/flight shots, they rarely offer the chance to play with light
the same way as static shots.

This shot and my recent Pied-billed Grebe and Ring-necked Duck all came from the same morning,
so it was a super productive outing.

Canon 600mm f/4 IS II + 1.4x III on EOS 1DX Mark II
1/3200 at f/5.6, ISO 400, handheld
Very minimal processing in LR CC. Did clone out one significant ripple that reflected the blue sky. Uniform green is much better.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Looks fabulous to me. I don't see anything I would change. Colors, light, background all just about perfect. Thank you for sharing, Dorian.

[Mike Poole]

It works very well for me - but then I like the more unusual type of shot. The darkness is effective due to that wonderful eye. Maybe try cloning the catchlight out as I find it distracting here, not often that gets said!

Mike

[Raybel Robles]

Very nice image, I like this type of photos with a dark BG but nice light on the bird. I would crop tighter a bit, there is a lot of empty space specially below the duck.

[Arthur Morris]

Sharp with nice light but the large expanse of foreground bugs me ...

with love, artie

[Isaac Grant]

I like the mood of the image. Details are nice as is the light but this one is too dark for me and there is too much dead space below the bird. I would try and lift the exposure a bit more on the bird to really give a spot light effect and cut off some of the dead space below.

[John Mack]

Like it as presented. The bird is perfectly placed in the frame. Love that dark water.

[William Dickson]

I like this...It would look really fab on a large print. Yes, very appealing to my eye.

Will

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

I would remove the bottom on the image, make it more of Pano crop which improves the image.

Light on the bird looks really nice.

TFS

[Dorian Anderson]

Well, the 8 responses thusfar are split - 4 love the wide foreground, 3 suggest cropping in more. To me this shot is all about the watery habitat; if I had more frame would have cropped even wider. The huge majority of my shots (and generally shots on this board) follow the same tried-and-true cropping format, one that is very subject forward, so I wanted something different, more habitat forward. So, thank you all for the feedback. The shot was designed wider, and I'm going to keep it that way for the moment.