American Coot in rainbow water.

[Daniel Cadieux]

In late fall of last year I spent a long time staking out a trio of coots, crouching hidden in muddy river bank in Ottawa...it was cold, wet, miserable, and I finally did get some images that I was marginally happy with (coots are not often seen in Ottawa).

Fast forward to Florida in February (Lake Morton, Lakeland)...they were almost walking over my boots, and I quickly found them to be in the way of other subjects I wanted to photograph! I still managed to get a bit wet though as I was laying flat parallel to a slightly slanted bank - one foot and one elbow slowly seeping lower in the water's edge. Quite the characters though, and they sure make a pond lively!! This one was coasting by a particularly pretty patch of water...colours created by a combination of buildings, trees, grass, and sky.

Canon 30D + 100-400L @400mm, aperture priority, evaluative metering, 1/800s., f/6.3, ISO 800, +1.3 EC, handheld, slight crop for comp. Once piece of debris in the water cloned out.

[Stu Bowie]

Dan, difficult characters to expose correctly, especially the white of their beaks - but you have succeeded nicely here. Good HA, detail and sharpness, and just love that BG. If anything, a touch off the bottom would work for me.

[Jeff Dyck]

Very nice Daniel. I really like the "rainbow" in the background and the feather detail you have coaxed out of the flank looks just excellent.

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

Well done. As mentioned, the exposure on these guys if usually a challenge, esp. that bone white bill.
Shooting angle worth the wet shoe, sharp, lovely water color.

Did you have to remove a lower catch light?

Another nice one

Cheers

Randy

[Doug Brown]

Love the color of the water. Nice sharpness. Good job balancing out the exposure. I remember your earlier Coot images. I chuckled at the fieldcraft you had to utilize to get close, because my experience with them mirrors your more recent experience in Florida.

[Gary Esman]

Hi Daniel, very nice. Like the details in the blacks and great exposure. Very cool background with the pastels.

Gary

[Aidan Briggs]

I can't imagine expending that much effort over coots! Glad to see you got some easy images of them in Florida. This one is pretty much perfect. The soft light, water colors, low angle, and pose are all great.

Well done!

[Dave Leroy]

I like how the soft mottled bg colours and pattern work very well with somewhat similar pattern on coot.

Very well done.

Dave

[Troy Lim]

Nice shot, love the composition and exposure.
Do you do any short of PP on the water? Always love how smooth the water is in your shots.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hey Troy, thanks for the kind words!

No PP done to the BG, except a soft pass of the sponge tool to augment the colours. I like really low angles, so perhaps its the BG thrown nicely OOF that you are seeing/liking.

[Troy Lim]

Hey Troy, thanks for the kind words!

No PP done to the BG, except a soft pass of the sponge tool to augment the colours. I like really low angles, so perhaps its the BG thrown nicely OOF that you are seeing/liking.

I never used the sponge tool. I will check it out :) Thanks for the tips.

[Daniel Cadieux]

You're welcome! It works great if you use a soft brush (0% hardness) and low percentage flow (e.g. 8%) for localised saturation or desaturation tweaks...

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the low angle and BG. Nice image Daniel!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Daniel,
I remember this! Good thing you were going to catch your flight otherwise i think you would have been in the water entirely! You did an excellent job on this with both the BG and angle. Works great overall IMO!

[Malcolm Benn]

Lovely image .. the stark contrast of a black bird against the rainbow colouring of the water is fantastic.