The snow is deep here, and I have been cooped up inside, so looked back over images from this fall.
This nice female woodie was swimming in the late afternoon, Cleveland, Ohio.
D700 500mm/f4 with 1.4 TC, ISO 800 f/5.6 1/1250
Post: NX2 with some selective sharpening in PS. The white patch around the eye is very close to blown, with brightest pixels at 253.. I did reconvert it with less exposure, selected the white patch, inverted, and then brought up the remainder of the image with curves.
What a very nice photo , I like reflect and awsome color and sharpness, there some dark spot in right top of shot BG , I like that remove it from Bg.
With best wishes
Babak
I think female wood ducks are quite underrated. Great fall colors, eye contact, and the little leaf adds to it. The shape of the reflection makes her look almost mean. :) I might clean the upper right area a bit and it needs about 1.2 degrees CW rotation.
BTW, there is a fairly simple but much better way to save the whites. Convert the image once for the mid-tones and then again much darker--you can use Linear in extreme cases. Then paint a QM of the darkened whites, put it on it's own layer, move it into place with the Move Tool, and then erase any overlapping darks...
This is a much better approach as you do not need to lighten the bird....
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Golden woodie
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