Mallard on snow

[MarkoA]

Cheers,

Here's another attempt to capture mallards. This time the conditions were much better with sun shining.
With 70-300mm, f5.6, 1/200, ISO200.

N39A1699_1 by Marko Akselin, on Flickr

Plenty on learning to do, especially on having patience on setting the parameters before shooting, but I was still getting familiar with the lens. Would you buy that excuse?

[the black fox]

Re: Mallard on snow

Nice shot ,wish we had snow and definetly in need of sun

[tesarver]

Re: Mallard on snow

Well done

Tom

[Tigger]

Re: Mallard on snow

nice shot I like that

[Nathaniel]

Re: Mallard on snow

I like the composition and the sunlight striking the subject on the side. Well done.

[enneo]

Re: Mallard on snow

Nice image.

[Stan]

Re: Mallard on snow

The exposure is much better than your last shots and the mallard looks good in the snow.

It is spoilt a bit by the out of focus bird behind and I think with a bit of patience he may have moved on and you would have had a clear shot or change your position - it looks like if you moved round to your left, then the bird wouldn't have been in the way and the shot may have looked like this - just removed the bird using content aware in photoshop

Stan

zzzz.jpg

[AlexR!]

Re: Mallard on snow

Marko, very nice image; getting the lighting of sunlight on snow right is tricky, and you've done really well. I also love how the angle of sunlight shows the curve of its body.
Stan has given a lovely demonstration of the advantages of a clear background too.

[MarkoA]

Re: Mallard on snow

Thanks all for comments. Yes, it is not difficult to I admit that there was room for improvement. Stan's demo made it clear.

[the black fox]

Re: Mallard on snow

i agree with cloning out the bird directly behind the main bird ,but removing the other birds and the post just makes it a mundane record image to me ,each to there own i suppose ,people who look at these in a hundred years time will think we lived in perfection it just throws it all out of context to me,even the blades of grass poking through the snow have been removed . next step just remove the mallard completely and replace it with a golden eagle !!!!!!!

[MarkoA]

Re: Mallard on snow

I agree to some extend with your comment black fox. What I think went wrong with my original picture was the extra bird just behind my main target. The post and others belong to the picture - so we agree here. But the demo, I think even tough it was done via pp, just wanted to point out capturing and composing the right moment. I don't yet have photoshop nor lightroom and have not utilised gimp for altering the image that dramatically. And I'm not sure I want to. So I think I will not add the golden eagle - disagreeing here. :)

But this is fantastic. I'm million years behind you specialists and I get to learn every time.

[Dawesy]

Re: Mallard on snow

i agree with cloning out the bird directly behind the main bird ,but removing the other birds and the post just makes it a mundane record image to me ,each to there own i suppose ,people who look at these in a hundred years time will think we lived in perfection it just throws it all out of context to me,even the blades of grass poking through the snow have been removed . next step just remove the mallard completely and replace it with a golden eagle !!!!!!!

Have to agree with Jeff , too many shots end up looking like studio portraits , maybe its where I go to shoot my pictures but very rarely can I can capture wild birds in " perfect " settings , but that also might mean I need more patience and work a bit harder.