Wood Duck (m)

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image at Lake Morton in Lakeland, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 500mm PF, Camera and lens supported by a Oben carbon fiber monopod with a Wimberly MonoGimbal head
1/1600 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV +1 ISO 1600 Auto 1 WB, image captured at 500mm (750mm 35mm Equivalent)
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2023 and Topaz Denoise AI RAW
Cropped for composition and presentation

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Joe. Would love to photograph this species one day, but alas nothing comparable here. Amazing colours. I like the BG...the gradient colouring saves it from perhaps a less interesting BG. The bird is sharp and you've handled the SH well. TFS

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Joe .. nice portrait with well controllled tones , color looking very nice .
Wish for a darker BG , but understand that it might have been impossible

TFS Andreas

[Dorian Anderson]

Yeah, these guys are super pretty. Nicely done on getting all the colors; they really crack on the light BG. Something looks funny about the dark patches below and behind the high. The rest of the head look pretty sharp,
but those areas look a bit smeary. Did you do anything different to them?

[Joseph Przybyla]

Yeah, these guys are super pretty. Nicely done on getting all the colors; they really crack on the light BG. Something looks funny about the dark patches below and behind the high. The rest of the head look pretty sharp,
but those areas look a bit smeary. Did you do anything different to them?

Hi Dorian, thank you for viewing and commenting. Nothing really done to the dark areas on the head. I did mask the head and lowered the highlights a little bit and then raised the shadows the same to open up the head, it looked a tad dark.