It was a balmy -32 Celsius at the time of this image creation. This beautiful drake all sorts of time bathing, and bathing, and bathing, and I knew a wingflap was coming soon...but lying on the ice already half frozen it seemed like it took forever for it to pan out. I even took my eye off the viewfinder a couple of times to shake and squeeze my frozen fingers. Thank fully the flap came as I was looking at it, and it turned it's body in the absolute best angle possible to boot! Anyhow, it was time to go warm up in the ar for a bit....nothing like the feeling of fingers thawing out!.
Canon R6 + 100-400L II + 1.4TC @ 346mm (I was not going to fiddle taking the TC on and off at that temperature!), manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/2000s., f/8, ISO 3200, handheld, small crop for comp, needed to add more contrast and saturation than usual as the water was somewhat misty, but not enough to leave in.
Another strong result with the zoom and TC! Love the pose. Exposure and detail are excellent. I could see adding a bit of black/dark to give the image a bit more contrast. It feels the tiniest bit thin as is.
I shot Green-winged Teal yesterday in Southern California; for me it was a somewhat nippy 15 degrees Celsius. All relative. Never did approach the quality of this image though. So tough to get the head angle such that the beautiful green shows up like this. Great image.
Hi Dan ... well captured wing flap and those temps do sound scary to me as a Central European
I do like the soft light and I am undecided about any more punch .... specially not blacks , as that will kill the softness .
So I would rather leave it as is .
Green-winged Teal Maximum Extension!
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