Confused Wood Duck

[Raffi Schayngesicht]

This wood duck thinks it is a mallard it has been swimming together with a bunch of mallards for the past year in the Wilmette harbor this one was taken in late afternoon in the shade thrown by a yacht I was in partially in the water to be as much as I could @ eye level with him
Sharpened and cropped in PS did not think exposure needed adjusting,
there is a hot spot on the right but I thought it could be left alone,
I’m not sure what else it needs, Comments are welcome

D300 70-200mm
Focal length 200
ISO 2oo, 1/200 F2.8
Fill flash, hand held
Cropped ~25%

[Linda Dulak]

Raffi: I like the low angle and the position of the duck in the water. However, the white reflection on the right side draws my eye away and has fooled the camera to underexpose your duck. If this were mine, I'd crop almost to the edge of that whitish reflection and then try to clone out the rest of it. Then lighten the entire rest of the image to the proper exposure for the duck.

Linda

[John Chardine]

Hi Raffi- The image is appealing. Nice and sharp, nice eye contact. Agree with Linda on the patch of white. There is a gradient from dark in the UL corner to brighter in the LR corner. This can be adjusted using the gradient tool in Adobe Camera Raw or in post-proceesing: briefly- 1. duplicate the layer, select the lower layer and lighten using Levels, 2. select the upper layer and click the mask button in Layers, 3. select the mask, then select the gradient tool and drag across the image from UL to LR or vice versa (depends on how the gradient is set). The gradient in the mask in the upper layer will let the lighter, lower layer show through in a graduated way. Here is the result.

BTW I like the low angle but it could have been lower!

[Kerry Perkins]

Raffi, nice capture and good points made above. John really brought out the detail in your image! I'm surprised at your comment about the exposure, as the duck is very dark overall. I have seen this same scenario, with a wood duck hanging out with the mallards. I guess they don't get to see themselves in a mirror!