"The Elegant Pintail"

In april of this year, the local pond was loaded with all manner of waterfowl in their dress-ups, including this very handsome guy. I had been photographing him bathing and preening and swimming and so on but hadn't got a good wing strech. Actually I had been trying for a couple of weeks and was getting a little frustrated.

So turning my attention to the wood ducks, and being real focused, I hadn't noticed that this guy had snuck up on my position, got up on a stump and started doing this beautiful wing strech to my left about 50 feet away. I spotted him when taking a quick scan of the area and immediatly set about to get everything turned to that direction, and sighted in.Just as I did, he stopped the strech ,and got off the perch he was on. After muttering a terse- Aw bed sheets(or something like that) -to myself, I started this half prayer, half wishful thinking sort of train of thought. It went like this --" Well wouldn't it be so nice if this guy would just swim right on up to that spot in front of me 20 feet away, and do that again!" And I could hardly believe it when he did just that! In fact he was so close I had to back up after the first insurance shots were taken to get him all in the frame. And then he held this pose for the longest time! That CF card was red hot!

I'm not positive, but sometimes the photo gods listen.


Anyways,, I like this shot because the viewpoint is at his mid body. I remember being taught in figure drawing class(And I'm pretty impressed with myself that I can remember that far back), that when doing a posed figure, putting the navel of your subject at the midpoint of your drawing paper, gave the most realistic and natural feel to the drawing. It was the view we expect to see with our eyes.. It creates "presence". And it also works for this guy too I feel. I also like the strong diagonal through the picture dividing things into two separate triangles and the weaker body line diagonal doing the same to create a lot of eye wandering and therefore interest.

Interestingly,

The blue on his bill is actually part of his breeding package and it wasn't until far into processing that I realized this ,I just thought it was a glossy reflection the whole time!

I did levels for white and dark point, flattened, did global curves for some extra contrast, sat boost 30%, masked just for areas of the bird(I couldn't believe how much I had to use to get any effect to show), Photokit luminance sharpening followed by very selective edge sharpening with a mask, like on the waterdrops on his belly, eye circumference, and around some feathers-- and cloned out a stick on the right in the water --cause it just had to go.

cannon mark II 600/4 w 1.4X(840) 1/800 @ f5.6 ISO400 natural cloudy bright light