Very interesting behaviour. Did they doing anything special after this, fight, splash around, etc.?
Good dof for these settings, often a challenge to get two birds in same plane.
The centered placement( side to side) of the birds works well for this pose. Might try alternative crops, one with a modest crop up form the bottom, and a balancing crop from the top.
Neat to get the two males interacting like this - makes for double the great colour!. Personally I would have preferred a bit of separation between the bills. Perhaps a bit too magenta-ish in parts, especially the breast feathers?
Ditto everyone above. I think that you overdid the lightening of the right hand drake a bit. You need to try and restore some detail and density in the whites. I am experimenting with the Details Extractor preset in Color Efex. Do you have then or Viveza? With the former you need to put the whole thing on a layer and paint away a Hide All mask where you want the effect. Randy tried it and was most impressed.
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Thanks all for your comments. Great idea to work with the compositions. I see that many wood duck posts here have a tight crop with very little rooms above the heads. Maybe I will try that. The reflection here isn't that good so maybe I can crop some away.
Thanks for the color adjustments. I was playing with the selective color to bring out something in the water, probably because of that I messed up the color on the ducks. Thanks for the good advice. Will play with the magenta.
Regards to bill separation, :) this photo has the most separation I saw in a good 20 seconds of heated interactions. They were using their bills to touch each other's cheeks, bills, and necks. It was pretty amazing to see...
Hi Artie, thanks for your comments. I am in the process of upgrading from Viveza 2 to the full collection that will include color efex. I had a hard time lightening the duck on the right. I pushed the slide to the right on the shadow detail button on viveza but that also brings out the noise in the dark regions. So I had to do some regional NR in the dark areas. I will give it a try on the details extractor. Thanks!
Double woodies
. Personally I would have preferred a bit of separation between the bills. Perhaps a bit too magenta-ish in parts, especially the breast feathers?
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