Kodiak Posted December 5, 2016 Share Posted December 5, 2016 • This strikingly handsome Wood Duck showed up last year at the nearby marsh. Alone of it's kind and just for 4 days, I had some good luck shooting many cool takes of him but none of his female! Here is one… This time, I got a very beautiful Mandarin Duck female, she too is alone, without her mate, and playing hard to get but I was not gonna give up on this chance. Apparently landed some hours before, she was trying to hide under anything that offered shelter. In this case, she was staying too close to the cache for me to get a good horizontal, flat angle to shoot her. For now, I will do with these… 1 2 3 4 5 Have a look, have a good time! MattP, doeboy, Charlychuck and 3 others 6 Quote www.kodiakmedia.at bureau@kodiakmedia.at TeamViewer: 668 015 544 Skype: kodiakonline If personal taste is involved, Light is free, Mother Nature provides the light discussion is pointless. capturing it is NOT. but talent renders the image. (Charlychuck) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voidsea Posted December 5, 2016 Share Posted December 5, 2016 The lighting is really beautiful. Quote The Boss is watching you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
verysame Posted December 5, 2016 Share Posted December 5, 2016 These are great Kodiak! I especially love the first one (without number) and #4. It would be really interesting getting some insight about how you post process them. Thanks for sharing! Quote Andrew - Win10 x64 AMD Threadripper 1950x, 64GB, 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD + 2TB, dual GTX 1080ti Dual Monitor Dell Ultra HD 4k P2715Q 27-Inch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodiak Posted December 5, 2016 Author Share Posted December 5, 2016 The lighting is really beautiful. • My only talent in this regard was to recognize it… as Mother Nature lit the scene! Quote www.kodiakmedia.at bureau@kodiakmedia.at TeamViewer: 668 015 544 Skype: kodiakonline If personal taste is involved, Light is free, Mother Nature provides the light discussion is pointless. capturing it is NOT. but talent renders the image. (Charlychuck) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodiak Posted December 5, 2016 Author Share Posted December 5, 2016 These are great Kodiak! Thanks for sharing! Thanks and welcome for that! I especially love the first one (without number) and #4. …the drake, yes! Males have, generally, more spectacular plumage bird wise. It would be really interesting getting some insight about how you post process them. Still using Capture One v10 as RAW converter for all my PP and Affinity Photo as pixel editor. I render to the strict quality that was seen. I would never manipulate a wildlife shot but I do use AP to clean debris that do not contribute to the visual quality of a take. Quote www.kodiakmedia.at bureau@kodiakmedia.at TeamViewer: 668 015 544 Skype: kodiakonline If personal taste is involved, Light is free, Mother Nature provides the light discussion is pointless. capturing it is NOT. but talent renders the image. (Charlychuck) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlychuck Posted December 5, 2016 Share Posted December 5, 2016 Pure quality. Love the BGs. Nature provides the light but talent renders the image :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodiak Posted December 5, 2016 Author Share Posted December 5, 2016 Pure quality. Love the BGs. Thank you Charles, glad you like'm! Nature provides the light but talent renders the image :) Brilliant! … may use this quote of yours? Quote www.kodiakmedia.at bureau@kodiakmedia.at TeamViewer: 668 015 544 Skype: kodiakonline If personal taste is involved, Light is free, Mother Nature provides the light discussion is pointless. capturing it is NOT. but talent renders the image. (Charlychuck) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MattP Posted December 5, 2016 Staff Share Posted December 5, 2016 Just beautiful! :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animalhass Posted December 5, 2016 Share Posted December 5, 2016 Nice pictures, excellent PP. Marie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodiak Posted December 5, 2016 Author Share Posted December 5, 2016 Just beautiful! :D Yes, she is! When showing the takes to a student before posting them, I dropped the word "sexy" in my description!!! These Wood Duck are rather small compared to say a Mallard Duck… making them ever cuter! …to my eye anyway! Thanks for the comment! ;) Quote www.kodiakmedia.at bureau@kodiakmedia.at TeamViewer: 668 015 544 Skype: kodiakonline If personal taste is involved, Light is free, Mother Nature provides the light discussion is pointless. capturing it is NOT. but talent renders the image. (Charlychuck) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted December 5, 2016 Staff Share Posted December 5, 2016 Beautiful images. Fantastic colours/detail. Thank you for sharing. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodiak Posted December 5, 2016 Author Share Posted December 5, 2016 Nice pictures, excellent PP. Marie • What? I have the honour of your first post!?!?! Cool and WELCOME! This comment about PP means possibly that you are literate in this aspect of the workflow… I hope! Thanks for dropping by Marie and welcome again! Quote www.kodiakmedia.at bureau@kodiakmedia.at TeamViewer: 668 015 544 Skype: kodiakonline If personal taste is involved, Light is free, Mother Nature provides the light discussion is pointless. capturing it is NOT. but talent renders the image. (Charlychuck) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeros4 Posted December 6, 2016 Share Posted December 6, 2016 Hello Kodiak fellow Canadian. Most appropriate are your images of a North American bird, lovely, all of your photos of these amazingly attractive waterfowl. A Canadian friend of mine put me on to Capture One, I started with v7 and now on v9.3. It has made a world of difference to my image results. I am now doing my pixel pushing in AP. I look forward to seeing Affinity products outperform the competition as their business culture is so good. I digress, back to your amazing work and Affinity Photo. Are you able or willing to offer a video tutorial of your workflow? I would be most interested in viewing your process, assuming you can teach an old dog new tricks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodiak Posted December 6, 2016 Author Share Posted December 6, 2016 • Thanks for your comment Aeros4 Are you able or willing to offer a video tutorial of your workflow? I would be most interested in viewing your process… Here are some important points… Take good care to capture your subject, recording properly all its data within the DR of your sensor. Read the RAW file to fully restitute the recorded data with fist correct DRL, and then WB. These two steps should reveal most of the quality of your cap- ture… and are the base of my cooking. Now, the tricky part! One has to restore and render an organic image recor- ded by a mineral sensor. This is the seasoning part of the "cooking" where tasteful tweaks will do their magic… like micro contrast and micro saturation, mid-tones ta- ming and others. My workflow, for studio sessions, location works and wildlife, aims at the "closest to reality" look of the capture. I hope that helps! DR = Dynamic Range DRL = Dynamic Range Levels = black and white points setting. WB = White Balance Aeros4 1 Quote www.kodiakmedia.at bureau@kodiakmedia.at TeamViewer: 668 015 544 Skype: kodiakonline If personal taste is involved, Light is free, Mother Nature provides the light discussion is pointless. capturing it is NOT. but talent renders the image. (Charlychuck) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodiak Posted December 6, 2016 Author Share Posted December 6, 2016 Beautiful images. Fantastic colours /detail. • Imagine what it could be using Pantone! …just joking! Glad you like them! ;) Quote www.kodiakmedia.at bureau@kodiakmedia.at TeamViewer: 668 015 544 Skype: kodiakonline If personal taste is involved, Light is free, Mother Nature provides the light discussion is pointless. capturing it is NOT. but talent renders the image. (Charlychuck) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmac Posted December 6, 2016 Share Posted December 6, 2016 Beautiful images Kodiak. Wood Ducks are one of my favorites...Your images are always so razor sharp. Is this due to high quality equipment, post processing tweaks or a combination of the two? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodiak Posted December 6, 2016 Author Share Posted December 6, 2016 Beautiful images Kodiak. Wood Ducks are one of my favorites... Thanks jmac! The drake was the one I new and now I meet the Mandarin female… she looks so sweet! I haven't shot the Mandarin drake yet. So at this point, the Wood Duck female and the Mandarin male are high on my list too. Your images are always so razor sharp. Is this due to high quality equipment, post processing tweaks or a combination of the two? A combination of the three! good gear, fine tuning of all possible combos, and sinceI never use any form of sharpening in PP, impeccable, precise DRL is the better way to go. Aeros4 1 Quote www.kodiakmedia.at bureau@kodiakmedia.at TeamViewer: 668 015 544 Skype: kodiakonline If personal taste is involved, Light is free, Mother Nature provides the light discussion is pointless. capturing it is NOT. but talent renders the image. (Charlychuck) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmac Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 DRL? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodiak Posted December 7, 2016 Author Share Posted December 7, 2016 DRL? DRL = Dynamic Range Levels = black and white points setting. Quote www.kodiakmedia.at bureau@kodiakmedia.at TeamViewer: 668 015 544 Skype: kodiakonline If personal taste is involved, Light is free, Mother Nature provides the light discussion is pointless. capturing it is NOT. but talent renders the image. (Charlychuck) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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