Female Bufflehead

[Enrique Patino]

Canon 7D, 100-400mm (400mm), f5.6, 1/640

At last I was able to get close enough to one of these birds. A little windy today. Used Canon DPP for PP

C/C welcome

[Julie Kenward]

Nice wave action Enrique! Good detail on the bird as well.

Compositionally I'm not sure this is your strongest option. Part of me likes seeing the swell of the wave but another part of me wishes if there was going to be that much water in the lower left corner that it would be more in focus. I'd take some off the bottom and trade it for more room on top if this were mine.

If you want to get down to the fine details, I'd enlarge the image and clone over the tiny white spots (water drops) on the birds face and head.

Nice image overall - and congrats on getting close enough to photograph this one!

[Gordon McKechnie]

Very nice feeling of movement, and looks like great exposure & sharpness. My preference would have been for it to be more parallel to the camera though rather than being angled away

[Enrique Patino]

Thanks for the feedback... very useful.

Getting rid of the out-of-focus water in the left bottom corner is easy. Cloning the tiny water drops on the bird's face is not possible at this point as do not own photoshop. Are there other software that can do that?

As for the angle Gordon... I presume you mean the face... yes, I agree. The (small) bird was keeping an eye on a seagull that was harassing her.

more later...

Enrique

[John Chardine]

Good comments above. I like the image Enrique! The bird does seem to be jammed into the top-left corner so some more room there would be great. Like Jules I would trade some from the bottom, and also form the right side.

My initial impression was of a blue cast to the image but I think this is the lighting. The white cheek patch could be toned down a little.

[Enrique Patino]

Thanks John.

I will try to incorporate all of your comments and repost in a day or two, depending on how much free time I have and how quickly I can get on a computer with PS.

Good comments above. I like the image Enrique! The bird does seem to be jammed into the top-left corner so some more room there would be great. Like Jules I would trade some from the bottom, and also form the right side.

My initial impression was of a blue cast to the image but I think this is the lighting. The white cheek patch could be toned down a little.