Mallard Pair

[WildWings]

Hello everyone, I am new to the site and fairly new to outdoor photography as well. Hopefully, this site will grant me the knowledge needed to capture better overall pictures. Looking forward to viewing some of your pictures real soon. Here is a mallard pair, I took these yesterday while fishing a nearby lake. Comments please. Thanks!

[mjs1973]

Welcome to the Forum Ted. I think you have a nicely framed image here. I think it would be better if we could see the face of the lower duck.

What lens was this shot with? The reason I ask is because of the bokeh. I find the out of focus area in the background to be very distracting. Usually throwing the BG out of focus makes the subject stand out better, but in this image I find it distracting from the subject.

[SmartWombat]

EXIF says 400mm, but can't tell which 400mm.

[WildWings]

Taken with a Canon 100-400mm L f4 and Rebel XTi body

[mn shutterbug]

Welcome aboard. I have to agree with Mike regarding the bokeh. It is quite distracting. But, the ducks are well exposed and quite sharp. One other thing, in the future, please post your pics at no longer than 750 pixels on the long side. It's annoying to have to scroll sideways to see the whole image.

[Loupey]

Welcome, WildWings!

I like the pose of the male here. I agree with the others here about the background blur. I would assume that it was a fairly hot and/or humid day as the bokeh is easily affected by air quality.

Is this image a high crop? That too will affect image quality.


We are trying to be helpful. Thanks for sharing.

[WildWings]

Thanks for the responses. Enlighten me with "bokeh" term. I am not yet familiar with it. I did crop it but it was not very much.

[mn shutterbug]

Bokeh is the aesthetic quality of background blur, or more simply, the out of focus background.