Wood Duck Drake on patrol

[Gary Esman]

7D, 500mm + 1.4 TC, iso 400, f/6.3, 1/640, Tripod. Removed the reflecting catch light in the eye any minor repair. Cropped for comp.

Shot yesterday evening. Appreciate any comments and critiques. Thanks for looking!

Gary.

[Randy Stout]

Gary:

Well captured, perfect sun angle, all the colors are nice, but I really like the blue on the wings. Clean water! Crest is up nicely.
Whites look generally good, might consider a multiply blend mode on a selection for the white body band to see if you can tease up a bit more detail.
Good shooting angle.

Good one!

Randy

[Tony Whitehead]

Lovely low angle, light, and water, Gary. You captured the irridescene well and exposure looks good. The image looks a little flat and it may be worth darkening the blacks a bit and nudging up the contrast a little.

[Jeff Dyck]

Gorgeous image Gary - great colours and lighting. I was out chasing Wood Ducks myself this morning but certainly didn't do as well! I find the irridescent feathers on the drakes heads tough to photograph - this looks top notch.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Gary,

Nice capture and nice pose by wood duck. Agree with Tony on being a little flat otherwise.....perfect.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice colours on this photogenic guy, and I dig the low angle. There is a small OOF white spot touching the back of the neck that you could eliminate (I would). Otherwise beautiful image!

[Arthur Morris]

Excellent image and excellent critiques by everyone above. All that you need to do now is get the same image showing the purple cheek patch :) I love the water and the almost surprised look on the duck's face. Where? Fed?

[adrian dancy]

A nice image and agree with above. The first thing I noticed was the pale patch behind the bird's neck but it is hard to tell if that patch is appearing on the neck as well?

[Art Kornienko]

Love the lighting, low angle, bg. I too would remove the spot just behind the neck.

[Karen Summers]

beautiful colours in this bird a nice shot would have looked good with all the reflection

[Gary Esman]

Thank you all for your comments. I have not seen another website with such a great learning experience as this. Truly appreciate all the time and energy. I will redo this image tomorrow evening when I have some time. great comments and removing the OOF white spot should not be to difficult.

[Gary Esman]

Excellent image and excellent critiques by everyone above. All that you need to do now is get the same image showing the purple cheek patch :) I love the water and the almost surprised look on the duck's face. Where? Fed?

Thanks Artie. This was shot at North Chagrin Reservation. There were only a few open areas of water and we were fortunate enough to have a couple of these gorgeous drakes swim through it. As far as feeding no one in our group was throwing food. I did get a number of drakes with the purple cheek patch, unfortunately not this one. I had a feeling you may be looking for that;). Thanks again, Gary.

[Gerrie van Vuuren]

Like the low angle, eye contact, detail & colours. Lovely image!

[Gary Esman]

Reworked the image. Increased the contrast, removed the OOF white spot by the neck. Worked from raw original image. Hope this is better. Thanks again for all the help, Gary.

[Arthur Morris]

Excellent work on the repost.

[Tony Whitehead]

Good job, Gary. Really pops now.

[DanLim]

Repost is top notch ! Congrats.
Daniel.