Yet Another Northern Shoveler

[Richard Kowalski]

A rather quiet dawn at Sweetwater Wetlands in Tucson... Well bird activity wise; actually thousands of Red Winged & Yellow Headed Blackbirds were making a deafening racket when I got out of my car!

Not too much out of the ordinary when I was there, but many of the Shovelers were taking their morning baths. I captured this male in the middle of wing drying. The previous image in the sequence has near perfect wing position behind him, but I like this pose best. Not too sure of the Head Angle though. I think a little more towards me probably would have been better.

I was concerned about burning out the whites and needed to bring the exposure up in ACR by 2/3rds stop before the first pixels saturated, so while the neck looks a bit hot in this version, it isn't in the original. Boy these really are tough to expose correctly! Time for me to review ABP (the softcover book) Chapter 3 again I guess!

Canon 20D, 1/1000th, ISO 400, EV -1.0, Av
Sigma 50-500 - 500mm @ f/ 6.3
WB, exposure & crop in ACR, Noise Ninja, ccw rotation, S/H adjustment, touch of eye sharpen, +10 blue channel saturation, cloned out part of a Widgeon head in bg w/ PS

[Nonda Surratt]

Hi Richard!

I like the pose and a bit of wing blur, you do have eye contact, very nice detail too!

What I can't quite figure out is the head color, are they not pretty green? Sun angle maybe?

[Richard Kowalski]

Yes Nonda, their heads are an iridescent green when the sunlight hits the feathers correctly, otherwise they look dark, almost black.

[Nonda Surratt]

Thanks Richard, I've had that happen with mallards.

[Fabs Forns]

Excellent all around, great exposure in the whites, good pose, great head angle and nicely placed in the frame. You get the cigar :)

[George DeCamp]

Hey Richard!

This one rocks!!

I like the pose, the BG, the colors and the techs look really good! Seems to me this one would do well in the Avian, Wild and Free Birds forum!

Very well done!

[Richard Kowalski]

Thanks for the cigar Fabs. It's been a while since I had one!

Thanks for the comments George. I've been learning a lot from everyone on this fantastic site. Kudos to all those involved in starting and developing it!