Eye to eye w/ a mallard

I usually shoot most of my duck photos in the morning because at the lake where I most often shoot the flight patterns of the ducks are best suited to the direct, frontal light available there in the mornings. The direct, frontal light really makes the beautiful iridescent colors of the ducks shine. A few days ago, just for a change, I decided to go out in the evening to look for some "alternative" light. I got several back/side/rim lighted shots that I thought looked very nice. The trade off for the nice late eve light was that I had to use higher ISOs and slower shutter speeds resulting in a loss of some image quality and blurring in the wings and other moving parts of the duck. Another trade off was the loss of some of the rich colors of the ducks feathers. In spite of it all I was pretty happy with the results.

I like the direct, head on, close up look at this mallard coming in for a landing. You can see more than usual blurring movement in the wings due to the slow SS but personally this does not bother me as long as the head, eyes and body are sharp, in fact I kind of think the blur makes the shot a little more "real" or dynamic. I also think the image quality and sharpness is pretty good for my D300s at ISO 640. I will probably spend a little more time shooting in evening light in the future and possibly experiment with even slower shutter speeds and maybe try some panning shots.


This is nearly full frame so there is no more room for the wing tip unless I add a little canvas which I decided not to do.

This photo was taken with a handheld D300s and 200-400 with TC 14. Shutter speed of 1/500 @ 5.6, 96% of full frame.

Thanks in advance for comments and critiques.