Duck C&C PLease

[250Gimp]

Hi All

Here is a pic of a Male Mallard duck I took yesterday. The ligth was pretty flat so I upped the saturation, and sharpened it a bit.

Let me know if there is anything else I should have done, or did I overdo anything.

Be harsh if you need. I want to learn and improve my PP skills.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers

 

[Overread]

hmm well you have got the shot nice and low and the duck eye is in focus, but something (to me) does not look right. The background holds an element of depth to id well, but the duck seems to look flat. I tried playing around with the shot, but it seemed to stay flat. I think you might have benefited from a slightly wider depth of field in this shot.
As for pp it looks good to me, though one thing I would say (though this shot appears fine) is that when you resize to a smaller size of image always run the unsharpen mask over the shot = it does not have to be much but when you resize you do lose some sharpness in an image.

Aside from the flatness issue a good shot hope to see many more

 

[250Gimp]

Thanks Overread. I wasn't planning on shooting ducks that day, so I had my aperature at f4. I know more DOF would have helped for sure, as the tail feathers weren't that sharp.


Anyone else have some thoughts?

 

[ClarkKent]

Well, I had a couple of free minutes, so I hope you don't mind.

Heres a couple of things I did...I opened it up in Camera Raw, up'd the colors a bit and added some contrast. Then opened this up in photoshop and did the same thing really. Then added a bit of a vignette.

 

[250Gimp]

Not bad Clark Kent, thanks for trying.

Unfortunately the colours are a bit unatural for my tastes. The wing markings are actually purple, and the water is fairly dark with all the spring run off here.


Cheers