Fall Mallard

[Randy Stout]

This nice drake swam through some nice fall color at the local bird sanctuary. I liked the very subtle submerged leaf below his tail, the brush stroke like water. I have mixed feelings about the combination of orange and silver water color, but think it is an interesting effect.

D700 500mm f/4 at f/5.6 1/640 ISO 1250 (dim day)

Post: CS4 Photoshop. I recently had been reminded that the dodge and burn tools are primitive, so did some quick masks and layers to cover some debris in the water. I have to admit, it is a better, more elegant way.
Selective sharpening.

Advice always appreciated.

Randy

[Dan Brown]

Lovely, lovely BG Randy! I only wish for more "Drake Mallard" green on his head!

[Harshad Barve]

amazing species , awesome colors
techs spot on as usual
TFS

[Ilija Dukovski]

Very nice, I think the water colors are excellent. I like the silver effect, what is reflected?
Did you do any BG NR? Very clean BG.

[Samuel Mulder]

Everything looks pretty good. I'm not sure about the color on the bird though, it looks like some sort of color cast... it could just be the reflected water, but I'd play around with the colors and see if I could get him looking a bit more natural.

[Desmond Chan]

I agree to the possibility of a color cast here. Lovely color of the reflection, very nice background. On my monitor, the mallard looks like it could be sharper.

[Randy Stout]

Thanks everyone for the comments:

Ilija- no NR run. D700 is pretty clean at 1250. It helps that the background was lighter, and exposed to the right

Samuel & Desmond: I will look into the colorcast issue. It didn't strike me as such, but the bird does look little cool perhaps?

Cheers

Randy

[Randy Stout]

Slight tweaking of color on bird, removed a bit of blue, set white point, did some output sharpening.

Let me know what you think.

Randy

[paul leverington]

Randy--strong blue cast here. I think if you set your whitepoint say using his neck ring you could clear it up. Also try some different crops maybe. Seems a bit tight on at his rear end and the overall shot has no balance in general --too much weight on the right. Other than that this one has some terrific colors with that water . I love the transition from the orange to the blue and how soft theu all look.

Paul

[Randy Stout]

Paul:

I did set the white point on the neck ring in my repost, also removed some blue in color balance (-23).

I will check it at home on my better monitor, see if I can fine tune it some more.

As far as balance, I appreciate your point, but I do feel that the color of the left side of the image has some "weight" to it compared to the silver on the right, so I feel that does help on the balance front. Yes, no physical object there, but balance for me can be an actual object, light, color, etc.

Just my take on a very slippery subject!

Randy

Thanks for the input.

[Dan Brown]

Randy, I think that your adjustment of the green in the head is great! As for the blue cast, IMO, not a problem in either post. As for the crop, I like it as is, I wouldn't want to crop out any of the left and loose BG!

[Ilija Dukovski]

Ilija- no NR run. D700 is pretty clean at 1250. It helps that the background was lighter, and exposed to the right

I didn't even notice the ISO. That D700 is really great.

[Brian Barcelos]

Re post an improvement to an already great image. I love the reflected colors on the water and agree with you on the balance issue. Only thing I'd do is maybe try to darken the iris a little to bring out his eye some more. Congrats

[Kiran Poonacha]

The repost looks great, loved the colours, details and the water colours put it over the top, congrats..

[Gary Esman]

Very nice shot! The BG is gorgeous. Beautiful reflection.