Harlequin Duck

[Bonnie Block]

I managed to get as close to a wild Harlequin Duck as I ever have today. This male came up the rocky spit on its own. The light was not ideal--and just after the ducks all left the sun came out. Tough species to get close to.
Canon 7D
1/400s f/7.1 at 700.0mm iso800

[Harshad Barve]

lovely species , nice expo and sharpness , BG is not ideal but do not bother me much
TFS

[Raymond Barlow]

excellent habitat shot Bonnie, I like this.. and a very rare bird in our area, so it is great to see such a fantastic view, feet and all., awesome.

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Bonnie,
You got the angle right, colors are nice and most important head angle is perfect, I have a few suggestions that may improve this nice photo even further
1) try toning down the whites a bit, they are just about toast on my screen
2) Also tone down the BG a bit and blur out the distracting elements more
3) The bird lacks fine feather detail, this is most likely due to NR process, if you have the RAW file go back and turn all noise reduction off except for color or chroma NR (if using DPP or LR) then do your processing and resize the image if after applying final sharpening you saw noise on the bird then go back and do very gentle NR on the original.

Thanks for sharing.

[Bonnie Block]

Hi Arash,
Thank you for your detailed comments on this one.
I will work on the things you have mentioned. This image was processed in LR--and I am now seeing that to my eye the 7D files do not do well in there right now. Even though it converts the RAW file, I am not sure that the camera is really supported at this moment. (this is the latest update) Doing the processing in DPP creates quite different look. Much cleaner and sharper files.
I have already blurred and toned down the bg--but I will go a bit further now. I didn't want it to look too processed. If you think it can go more I'll give it a shot.
I am happy to have your suggestions on sharpening--this is a bird that is very smooth naturally. I will give it another try with your suggestions and repost my results when I get a chance!

Thanks again!

[Glenn Bartley]

Neat shot Bonnie! I love this species and you have done quite well here. I acually like the BG personally. I do think it needs a touch of CCW rotation. Cheers!

[Dave Leroy]

Well done Bonnie. Good for you to gte one on the beach, which I find very hard to do. Hopefully you will find time for repost. Looking forward to it. Dave