Theme: Mallard Hen on final

[Randy Stout]

This hen was coming in for a landing yesterday at the local bird sanctuary. Quite bright by then, but the fill off the snow helped even her out.

D4 500 AFS f/7.1 1/2500s ISO 500. Manual exposure. Hand held.

Post: Slight crop to move her out of the center a bit. Selective sharpening.

I liked the sense of depth provided by the blurred oak trees in the background and those great orange feet.

Advice and comments always appreciated.

Cheers

Randy

[adrian dancy]

Superb capture with that lovely underlighting.

[Graham Wilkes]

Lovely clean sharp shot perfectly caught, I agree with you regarding tree reflection and fee,t helps to balance the overall image.

Graham

[Jonathan Ashton]

My advice Randy - just keep doing what you're doing! It is often said that when the bird intersects the horizon the image suffers but I think quite the reverse in this case becaue now you have the pale underside of the wing against a darker background, I don't think it would have looked so impressive had the wing been against the snow. Super shot well done.

[Karl Egressy]

Excellent capture, Randy. The snow provided a nice even light on the underpart of the Duck.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Randy lovely incoming pose of the duck and i like the stretched wings .
I just think i might lower the EXP on the HL and 1/4 tones , just a thought .

TFS Andreas

[Randy Stout]

Thanks everyone for the comments, much appreciated.

Andreas: I am pretty happy with the exposure, but will tweak it as suggested and see how I like it. Thanks

Randy