happy to see the purple cheek patch. Planning to improve my wood duck collection this summer. This was my first visit to one of my favorite spots here. It was a beautiful morning with clear skies and very little breeze. A heavily wooded pond so there is always some play of sunlight and shadows going on. Tough situation to deal with....esp. with a duck like a woodie...but fun, nevertheless.
At my work monitor so I don't trust the colors as it looks too green.
However I like the dappled light, esp with the accent on the head which is where you want your viewer directed, nice job.
The colors and pose are great however the head looks funny to me almost soft or noisy unlike your usual images. Maybe adding a little depth with the darks on the face will help?
I like the pose, low shooting angle, birds angle in the frame, purple cheek patch.
I agree that the colors look just slightly off. The contrast is also fairly low. I haven't quite figured out the color issue. My usual tricks didn't help.
Karl, I went back to the base raw file and selected a different WB. I had done some curves work on red channel that had made it look green. In my rework, I did not do that.
Beautiful image to begin with, although the green did jump out at me. Repost helped that, as well as fixing the slight softness of the head. Great image; great rework. Wish I could find a pond like this.