Proud Mother Duck

[Melkus]

Photo of a Mother duck checking her eggs and keeping a eye on me.



F-4.2
1/70
ISO-50

[Mark von Kanel]

Hi Melkus, is that your real name? where are you from? like the colours in this image, looks a little over exposed to me

[dje]

Yes Melkus, I think it's over-exposed too. If you have Photoshop or Elements, try Decreasing the highlights by about 50% and also add a Colour Burn layer set to about 20% opacity. This will reduce the brightness and add a little more richness to the colours.

Nice image
Cheers Dave

[Kris V]

Exposure aside, I think it's a great capture!

[Melkus]

First name is Paul but there another Paul here so I used my last name. I'm from Fayetteville, NC. I do agree it's a little too bright was in a hurry when I did the post-editing. Thanks all.

[JPS]

Hi Paul,
I agree with all of the comments above.
If you decide to re-work it, I for one would like to see it. I certainly like the composition of the picture.

[FrankMi]

First name is Paul but there another Paul here so I used my last name. I'm from Fayetteville, NC. I do agree it's a little too bright was in a hurry when I did the post-editing. Thanks all.

No problem using your first name, Paul. We have a number of duplicate first names. I think that's why we were given last names and logon names, so we can tell them apart. It helps when we have names and general locations, like Fayetteville, NC, to help figure out things like when someone may not be able to reply because it's the middle of the night in their part of the world.

Nice shot, by the way!

[GrahamH]

Duck a la purple. Love the colour palette (exposure aside). Dine well.

Graham

[Dizzy]

Hi Paul,

First, welcome to the site..

I would agree with those above, in that it's a great shot barring the exposure and
bright spots. Hope it was OK, as I saved your pic and did a bit of work on it in
Lightroom:



Reduced the exposure a bit, added some contrast, sharpened individual colors and
a crop to remove the bright open space beside the tree. She looks healthy and
proud of those soon-to-be babies..

Mike

[Melkus]

Thanks Dizzy that looks wonderful! just what it needed. My problem is I'm just not real good with post-editing right now anyways, I will keep working on it.

[acsky]

Paul

You are not the only one here that lacks of skills for PP, so don't be discouraged, for me it is challenging and fun to improve my editing one step at a time.

Nice picture, very timely from you to catch the mother watching over her future babies.

Toño

[Steve S]

Hi paul, the edit mike did, looks much better. I also think getting a little lower would have helped this image. Try to get close to eye level with your subject. Nice job, welcome to CiC.

[Melkus]

Hi paul, the edit mike did, looks much better. I also think getting a little lower would have helped this image. Try to get close to eye level with your subject. Nice job, welcome to CiC.

Yea well did not want to make her mad

[Viana]

Terrific! She chose a real bower in which to have her family.

This is a great shot with lots of potential and a few problems, as you know, Melkus. So, here is a possible handling of the subject.


Corrected exposure in Lightroom, as much as possible. Because the duck’s tail was so blown, I decided that a bit of blurring and a vignette in Photoshop would make that less noticeable. I also cloned the eye a bit because it was rather blurry. Sharpened.