Male wood duck

[Rene Quenneville]

Here is a beautiful wood duck. What do you think about the view angle? Is the crop too tight?

1/1250 s
f/5
ISO 400
300mm
fill flash

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Beautiful capture with lovely reflection and well composed. Looks like a slight hot spot on the beak. It is a tad tight in the crop for me. I would prefer to see a little more canvas to the left and bottom. A slightly lower angle would be nice but not always possible. Congratulations and thanks for sharing Rene

[Randy Stout]

Rene:

A beautiful drake. I think it looks a bit overflashed for my taste, plus the eye has too many catchlights (horizon and flash). I agree with Judy it is a bit tight, esp. in front for me. Good head angle. As Judy mentioned, the bill is cooked a bit. (these guys are tough!)

The angle of the shot depends on how important the reflection is to you. As you go lower, it will stretch out and distort the reflection, but improve your perspective on the duck.

For me personally, unless the reflection is almost perfect, I aim for the lower angle when possible.

Thanks for sharing!

[Arthur Morris]

The framing is a bit too tight. Not sure what you mean by view angle... (The bird is swimming ever so slightly away from you.)

Two things to note:

1: this one screams: please do some eye doctor work on me!
2: for really great images of this species you need the purple cheek patch to be visible...

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

I agree about the eye, and I am not been driven by Arthur's suggestion, but as soon as I saw the image that's the first thing I noted.

May be you could have gotten lower, but that's not a big issue for me

Said the above, I would love to have this image in my files, thanks for sharing this stunning species.

[Stu Bowie]

Difficult characters with all the colours, but I feel you have exposed them nicely. I agree with Randy regarding the reflection, so I would take some off the bottom and top, and add a bit to the left.