Shot this in Maryland recently. I don’t see many redheads, so I was pretty happy to get one in flight.
I actually did a lot of post work on this photo. The frame with this wing position originally had a bridge in the background, so I moved the duck from that frame to one later in the sequence. I then cloned out where the redhead was in this frame. Otherwise, I didn’t really do much. I didn’t even sharpen the bird. All C&C welcome.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: Yes
Nikon D850
500mm f/4 + 1.4x tc, handheld
1/4000
f/6.3
Head detail very nice. Some IQ issues in the wings. I would think 4000th was enough to stop action but perhaps the processing had some effect. The blue BG could be a stop brighter.
In the large view, the IQ is not there… Not a comment on you Lyle as I know how good your work is, but
in my humble opinion, moving subjects around and from frame to frame is not bird or wildlife or nature photography in a pure sense.
Digital manipulation is fine and is its own category for me.
Just my observation.
Thanks for the critique. The bird is sharp in the RAW file. I should’ve sharpened before posting. It looked good enough yesterday afternoon with tired eyes, but a quick sharpen helped a lot.
On moving the bird to a different frame, I completely agree with you. It’s digital art at that point. It was mainly an experiment because I’d never done it before, and this presented a good opportunity to try. But I wouldn’t pass this off as a photo.
I like the nice incoming pose. Not a pose we often see. I would say generally you did a good job on taking care of the bridge. And I am glad we have better eyes than mine taking care of QC.
Nice job of moving the bird, Lyle. I have no problem with doing so as long as it’s labeled. I’ve done similar things on rare occasions. You did a good job of it as I don’t see any anomalies around the edge of the duck.
