Northern Pintail

[Sharif Uddin]

Just a generic Northern pintail photo. I don't really get many opportunities to photograph ducks. So I was excited to come across a few pintails last weekend. It was a little bit later in the morning. I went back in the afternoon hoping to get some photos in better light but they were gone. So I have to be satisfied with the ones I got.

Raw conversion with C1 pro 2021. In PS CC, I used linear burn on the overexposed whites on the throat to try to extract some details. Also smoothed out a couple of distractions in the background (silhouettes of drainage pipes ). NR in Neat image and smart sharpening in PS. I chose to use Neat Image for noise reduction because I was having trouble with Topaz. For some reason Topaz was introducing purple color fringing on the boundaries of the light and dark colors of the wing feathers.

Nikon D850 500mm PF
1/4000s f/5.6 ISO 800
HH

[Kurt Bowman]

Hi Sharif, very nice detail and good exposure on this subject. The low angle is awesome and placement in the frame works well. Nice work!

[Dorian Anderson]

My kinda low angle frame! We can see you had to do some work on the neck, but it still looks pretty good. Sharpness looks great, and the eye contact is perfect. An hour earlier would helped saturate the frame a bit more, but it still looks great.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Yes, my type of low angle as well! I get the impression the overall exposure could come down 1/3 stop or so, but very well processed and presented.

[Volkan Akgul]

hi

Very good.
congratulations

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Sharif ... love the super low angle shot .
Nice details in the subject .
One vote more for a exposure drop and i personally would check the mid to dark tones , and make them more neutral .... personal taste . As presented they are kinda cool in the WB .

TFS Andreas

[Jack Backs]

Nice detail, as noted, earlier in the morning would have ben better.