Merganser in duckweed.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Species-wise I'm leaning towards juvenile Hooded, but not ruling out juvenile Red-breasted. Anyhow, it was rather approachable - much more than I'm used to for any merganser. It was also rather predictable in habit. Spending lots of time diving in very shallow water under the duckweed (12-18 inches deep) it would "stand" and shake it off every so often. This is one of those instances, just after it shook its' head. BTW I purposefully kept the single speck on its' forehead as a sign of it being completely submerged before.

Being very overcast and sombre conditions I wanted to use flash, but lying flat on the boardwalk with the lens poking between the floor and lowest beam the flash was smack-dab beam height thus negating any of its usefulness. Plan B, overexposing the duckeed to get correct exposure on the merganser. The resulting RAW had a near-perfect subject but almost completely white surroundings which were then brought back to correct levels during post-processing.

Canon 40D + 100-400L @400mm, manual exposure, 1/200s., f/7.1, ISO 500, +1 EC metered off duckweed, handheld, just about full-frame.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

This little guy is very cute. :) Great angle, eye contact and soft light.

[Alfred Forns]

Love the feel of this one Daniel !!!! Sure is cute !!!

[Ramon M. Casares]

Love it, I didn't thought I was gonna like it so much as the thumbail didn't really shows how wonderfull this picture is!

[Ted Busby]

Nice image Dan; turned out extremely good considering your circumstance.
I like the inclusion of the duckweed throughout the image..Adds to the feel.

I'm fairly certain that your "Lean" is correct..I concur on the Juvie Hoodie..(larger head and less of an angled slope of head to beak)

[Linda Robbins]

I like the pose and the heavy duckweed. Lovely image. My vote goes to a juvenile Hooded.