Gary, that's what drew me to the shot. It took me a few seconds to realize that they weren't looking to my left, they were looking at me and wondering what that big one-eyed thing was looking at them.
Alan- I forgot to sharpen. I corrected it but I can't edit the original and a repost isn't an option apparently
The repost looks better. With the 1D4, you could have pumped up your ISO and gone for a smaller appeture instead of shooting wide open at F4. I am guessing you probably didn't have the time. So often action happens right in front of us and we don't have the time to react...except to hit the trigger. I agree on some off the bottom.
Nice shot Michael, it is a rare moment when one gets 12 good head angles at once. I agree with Marina. An aperture of f10 to f13 may have got all of their heads sharper, especially the foreground ducklings. I do like the repost better.
This shot is one of those rare occasions where I agree that stopping down would have helped this image. It's usually a compromise between buttery smooth background and total sharpness. In this case the background us so ugly and irregular that shooting at f4 didn't help and I lost sharpness on the ducklings to the right.
I have other shots of the group but they had relaxed and the head angles were all over the place. This image was a W.A.C. shot (wow, aim, click) and I typically start with f4 on the 600.