Shot this fellow in Maryland this winter. I had struck out on them earlier in the morning, but as I was leaving, I heard two of them squabbling. I looked over, and a female flew past me and landed to my right. I then saw two males flying toward me. They landed near the female, and this one ran the other off. I have a decent photo of the dust-up that I’ll try and post tomorrow. After his victory, this fellow gave a nice wing flap. Not much done in post: cropped a pretty good amount, sharpened the bird, set white and black points in levels, resized, ran NR on BG, and sharpened. All C&C welcome.
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A very neat wing flap, Lyle. We usually seem to get them with the wings spread or fully back for some reason. This makes an interesting variation. Nice composition and light.
A good action shot of this duck, Lyle. It’s impressive that ducks flap so fast that you get motion blur at 1/2500! The detail is good, especially in the darker areas but it seems a little soft in the white on top of its head for some reason. I’m not familiar with this breed of duck. Do you know what it is?
Excellent point of view on this image and good job on the exposure. You handled the white plumage detail well. I think I would have done this at 3200 or 4000 to sharpen everything but the wingtips. Of course that is in hindsight. Other than that I might try to lighten the black band behind the ducks head and get it to look more like the other reflection bands. But that’s pretty picky. I really like the water in this one.
