These guys were moving and feeding really fast so it was hard to catch them; I removed one reed that was crossing her face...the red beak really seemed that bright. C&C encouraged and greatly appreciated.
1DmkIII; f6.3, 1/2500; ISO 320; M; 500f4; hh
Common Merganser
These guys were moving and feeding really fast so it was hard to catch them; I removed one reed that was crossing her face...the red beak really seemed that bright. C&C encouraged and greatly appreciated.
1DmkIII; f6.3, 1/2500; ISO 320; M; 500f4; hh
Nice and sharp and the colours look great. Love the way you include habitat in many of your shots, and I love the reeds and the water droplet coming form the beak. Very artistic Katie. Looks like ISO won't be much of a problem with the Mark 3 either (lucky you!)
Lots to like here Katie - Like how you have included the habitat and left some room up front for the little guy to swim into.
Good HA and eye contact and nice catchlight - I have never seen these guys - just wondering if the reds on the beak are a little over saturated??
Nice work!
Katie, beautifully sharp image and composition. I think the oof reed on the far right side is a little distracting.
These are gorgeous birds, I guess I've never seen one.:)
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly" - The Little Prince
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that is one good looking bird!!! agree with cheryl in reference to removing the very oof reeds. i just cant get over all the detail. exposure looks perfect!! great job, katie!
Hi Katie
Just for completeness sake - this is a female Common Merganser. Around here the bills are a deep red-orange. On my monitor her bill is just a tad too red, but saturation looks pretty good. Nice job on hh. Lovely composition, good feather detail.
Did you notice the thin dark outline on the bill and passes the white patch on the neck? There may be a line edging the forehead too, but it is less evident. I have had that happen on some of my images too; I think it is a sharpening side-effect.
Nice
Cheers
Gail
Hello Katie,
You got a really nice capture there, as mentioned above the details and composition are lovely! To my eye the image seems a bit dark overall, so I took the liberty of making a couple of tweaks in CS4 to add some light to it. I used a levels adjustment to bring the red, green, and blue levels farther to the right and moved the midpoint slider a bit to the left, which punches up the mids. Used H/S to lower the red saturation just a tad and brought the yellow up a bit to get more of an orange color to the bill, which I believe is correct per Gail.
Really nice work and I hope you like the modifications. :)
PS - I have a weakness for redheads! ;)
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
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Katie, I like the looks of this guy so much I'd like to see it larger in the "frame." I think that could be accomplished with a further cropping, perhaps sacrificing (cutting off) some water on the left side of the image. I really like the inclusion of the reeds.
Thank you everyone and Kerry, I like your modifications and I will try to make those adjustments. Wendell, the full screen view on my monitor is great but I decided not to crop any more away. Thanks Gail for the gender ID...I had looked this one up in Sibley and I was surprised to see that this beautiful bird was the female. There were some males around as well but not as close and I had a really hard time with exposure as they are so sharply contrasty.
Great looking bird Katie. Excellent HA and composition. The re post by Kerry makes it stand out even more.
Congrats to both.
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