Morning at local lake - I liked this duck's coloring and bill. PP - cloned out part of white duck in LLC, some NR on top of head, H&S, bit of curves, some d & b. The duck's head had much lighter coloring than rest of body. The histogram looked pretty good on this, but still some detail loss on side of head. Still working on getting light and exp. correct.
7D, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM +2.0x
1/1000
5.6
Exp. Comp -2/3
ISO 400
I really like the black BR as it really does this proud, distinguished fellow justice by emphasizing the marvelous bill! His "in-your-face" stature works very well for me. Nicely done.
Very nice, Brendan! This dark BG and close up portrait look really elevates a normal mallard image into something special.
Two things you might try to see if you like them:
Take a bit off the right side of the frame. When the BG is dark like this we really don't need as much room for him to look into because we realize it's dark!
Also, try adding a medium dark vignette to the bottom of the frame where there isn't any and see if that keeps your eye more on the face and less on the breast of the duck. My eye keeps going down to the frame's edge because of how light that area is. If the darkness came all the way across and about 1/2" up from the bottom of the frame I think it would really help hold the viewer's eye at his face.
Keep working on the exposure issues but I think you're doing very well!
Very very nice exposure and excellent light Brendan. Like the pose and eye contact.
Going for a tight square crop you might be able to pull out another image.
Very nice portrait. It may be my screen, but if you brought the midtones up a touch, it would bring out the darker colors. However, I'm viewing on my laptop, which tend to be bright. I like the pose very much.
Nancy
Thanks Maureen and Captain James! Going full solid black for BG does make more impact.
Hope to take a ride on the Hooptie Deux one day when I make it back east. You got a good thing going here at BPN!
In your original post you mentioned a loss of detail on the side of the head, my thought (fairly new so I may be wrong here) would be the DOF @ 5.6 not exposure problems.
Thanks Jules, and Neil I think your right about more DOF regarding the back side of head. I probably should have been at maybe 8 or 10 instead of 5.6 to get it more in focus. So there was a little loss of detail from a combination of focus, noise, and exp.
Duck portrait
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