Hooded Merganser

[Bruce Enns]

This male Hooded Merganser has been hanging out with a small group of Buffleheads down in the backwater of Zuckerberg Island in front of our house. No sign of a potential mate for him yet. This is a significant crop...these guys are very skittish around here...

Canon 7D, 500 f/4 with 1.4x II, ISO 400, AV mode, 1/800s, f8

PP in LR 2.6, PS CS4

Comments and critiques much appreciated...thanks for looking!

Cheers!
Bruce

[Fabs Forns]

Nice EXP of a difficult bird, It looks like you exposed for the blacks because they look great, not so sure about the white in the head. BG and colors are beautiful. The eye could be sharper, Artie calls them floating pupils, many ducks have it.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the soft light, angle and eye contact. They are not exactly cooperative around here, either. I might go for a slightly tighter crop but that would not help with the lack of fine details. Have you tried using a throw-over blind? This might help with the distance.

[arash_hazeghi]

love the low angle and BG, HA is nice too. there is purple fringe around the head's white patch and it also looks soft on my screen. TFS

[Ryan Schain]

I like the colors and background. There appears to be a halo around he bird's head. Nice shot.

[Bruce Enns]

Thanks Fabs and Axel. Yes, March is 'tough bird to expose properly' month for me. I got my choice of Barrow's or Common Goldeneyes, Buffleheads, Hoodies, and Common Mergansers. Given that the ducks are so small in the frame even @ 700mm, I've been trying the spot meter in manual mode on the 7D and metering the whites at 1 2/3 to 2 stops over in the past couple of days (on male Common Mergansers with reflections). It still requires some tweaks in LR, but I think it is working a bit better than AV mode Evaluative. I will post some examples in the coming days.

No Axel, haven't tried a throw-over yet this year...probably will if I get the chance.

Cheers!
Bruce

[Bruce Enns]

Thanks for your comments Arash and Ryan. This one was more about the mood for me...yes it is a bit soft. I noticed the slight halo around the head too...it's from less than perfect masking out of the duck from the treatment that I applied to the background.

Cheers!
Bruce