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Inspiring and Supporting Photographers of Australian Birds

Pacific Black Duck

Photographed by

Glenn Pure on Tue 21st Feb, 2017 and uploaded on Sun 4th Jun, 2017 .

Resolution

1388x1050

Viewed

509

25984

Comment

Ian Wilson recently suggested that winning comp entries should be submitted to the Critique Gallery as they provide a way of showing how to do things right! Critiquing such images should therefore be informative. It may be just as valuable to submit comp entries that didn't rank, as for this image here from the Duck comp early this year. I liked this image quite a lot because of the 'spotlight' effect on the bird versus the darkness of the ducks in the background. Composition-wise, the tail of the duck on the right is distracting and possibly could have been cloned out but otherwise I though the placement of the bird worked and roughly complied with the rule of thirds. I thought the technical aspects of the image were fine (sharpness, lighting adjustments, noise control). Nevertheless, I'd appreciate hearing how others think it might be improved. (I've left the original image in the Duck competition gallery and simply made a copy here for the critique)

Equipment

Canon 80D with EF 100-400mm Mark 2, handheld at 400mm
1/1250 sec, f 7.1, ISO 800.
Initially processed in Canon DPP 4 to crop, adjust exposure and lighting and perform noise reduction. A 16 bit TIFF file was created from the RAW DPP image and finished in PSE (Adobe Photoshop Elements v9) where further noise reduction was applied to the main subject using Neat Image plugin for PSE. The background was noise reduced and the main subject sharpened.

Location

The Sanctuary, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, Australian Capital Territory

Keywords

adult

This image is not available for download.

Bruce Terrill	2017-06-05 13:37:07	Hi Glenn, I like the image also, it's interesting that the 'offending' tail that you refer to is so out of focus yet seems to be on the same focus plane as the main subject? Is the sharpening that you applied selective as in, with a magic wand or the marching ants tool? I also think that the exposure on the bird is a little bright and the bird on my computer, doesn't appear to be sharp yet I know that that is one of your workflow steps, I think the final step? Bruce
Ian Wilson	2017-06-06 10:04:02	From a technical point of view, the colour, lighting, noise and sharpness are nicely adjusted and meet my expectations for an Advanced Level image. The spot-light is what makes this image special; it is a brilliant demonstration of how to use natural light to isolating the subject from its surroundings. The bird is about the right size in the frame, although I would check to see if a slightly smaller version helped the composition. I would also try bringing the bird 'forward' in the composition by cropping off most of the foreground. This will provide a perspective with the bird appearing to be closer to the viewer and it may also give the feeling that the camera was lower when the shot was captured. One of the consequences of this suggestion is that the bird's reflection will be largely deleted. In this case it will be no loss as the reflection is broken up by the ripples and does not include the bird's head. Reflections work best when they show the entire bird, cutting off a reflection is a bit like cutting off a birds tail. If you must crop a reflection, then crop hard like I have suggested. This is the same rule that I would apply to a portrait, crop hard to show only the bird's head rather than some kind of indecisive half-length view. The top edge of the frame is OK but I would also try extending it a little further to see if it will exaggerate the feeling of a lower perspective. The tail end of the duck on the right is definitely a no-no for two reasons; first, one should never allow the framing to cut a bird off and secondly, in this case, it is in the spot-light and therefore a distraction. I think you may have underestimated the importance of this shortcoming when members were making their final cut. I sometimes think it is a bit pointless discussing what might have been but in this example I will mention the speculum. I am imagining what the image would have been like had the speculum been at the right angle to give us the full blaze. That would have given us the wow factor that the image is missing.
Glenn Pure	2017-06-10 10:14:14	Ian and Bruce, thanks for your thoughtful and helpful critiques. I intend to re-process and re-post this image after considering responses to how it could be improved. So I'd encourage others to offer their comments too. It will all help produce a better result.

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	4/283 in Critique Gallery
	383/1584 by Glenn Pure
	73/241 of Pacific Black Duck
	570/1774 of Ducks, Geese and Swans
	10311/34495 Overall
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