I think this must be one of my favourites of the whole Spitsbergen trip from last June. We ran into this couple of Long-tailed ducks when suddenly a second male flew in and disturbed the peace. The fighting was very intense and sometimes they would be under for a couple of minutes, the female would get bit and was nearly drowned and there was a lot of splashing and flying around. At times it felt like they would fight to the death. I tried to keep the fight in frame while trying to get a low angle and make a composition. I guess for me it came together in this shot. The light isn't great but to me this demonstrates the fight pretty well and I hope you'll enjoy it.
Canon EOS 7D 1/1600 f8
ISO 640
Canon 500mm L IS USM F4.0
Handheld laying on my stomach
Last edited by Krijn Trimbos; 07-21-2010 at 01:52 PM.
Very nice image Krijn, bottom bird looks sharp and blacks and whites seemed handled well to me. Great job on the framing. I see some noise elements on the rear bird and would be tempted to run noise reduction on it, or perhaps manually blur the artifacts a bit.
Very cool! I like the juxtaposition of the aggressive bird coming in and the other one just paddling along. Exposure and composition look good, too! Thanks for sharing.
The image tells the story. Distress on front bird, swimming fast with large wake, aggressive pose on the incoming bird.
In a perfect world, would prefer more DOF with the rear bird sharper, but probably not possible with the lighting you had to work with.
This image tells the story well, Krijn. The wide-eyed sharpness of the front duck with the water cascading from his back and the turbulent wake. The obvious focus and aggression of the incoming. All the elements work well together. Not easy to achieve in the chaos - well done.
Wickedly executed while prone. Would you rather have had sharp focus on the attacker?
Did they ever announce the final contest results?
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Long tailed duck fight to the death
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