Woodie drake on golden pond

[buzzsaw]

[LPCrowRiverFisherman]

That just may be the best one of a duck that I have saw on here.

Great Shot, when was this taken?

[finnbay]

You caught every color on him well! Beautiful!

[MN Shutterbug]

Nice shot.

[Dbl]

Nice Mike!

[mmeyer]

Beautiful Mike!

[Steve Foss]

Sweet shot, buzz.

[jonny_redhorse]

wonderful photo Mike!....can hardly wait for open water!

[polarsusd81]

Holy carp Buzz. That is the most beautiful shot I think I have ever seen. You might make a dollar or two off of that one.

[buzzsaw]

WHOA Nellie! Thanks guys. I got this one out in San Diego area (Santee Lakes) back in late January. Woodies may in general be tough to get here, but not there.

You guys are kind! I need to take some off the top of that image and add some canvas to the bottom to tweak that comp a bit.

[yakfisher]

That's a great shot. How did you get him to land right in front of your backdrop? JK That is a really nice photo.

[fishgutz77]

Nice pic!

[Deitz Dittrich]

Dude,-----Stunning!... to say the least!!!

[DeeDee]

WOW

[buzzsaw]

Thanks guys. Yak, I need a pond in my backyard, that would be sweet.

[pickinupafew]

Man..... that is a sweet image Buzz.

I would love to have one like that in my 'A' list.

Your PP is spectacular. Care to share your workflow with us? From card to web... what's your process?

Thanks in advance!

[buzzsaw]

 Quote:

Your PP is spectacular. Care to share your workflow with us? From card to web... what's your process?

Thanks first off.

I pull everything in through ACR and I do as many adjustments in there as I can ie... the sliders are great for exposure, recovery, clarity, vibrance (I don't use sauration as vibrance is a "sorta smart saturation" that brings up areas that need it vs a global saturation. I tweak my highlights (either with recovery slider or on the parametric curve with dialing the highlights back)and shadows and then do the selective color and very slight input sharpening... level the image if need be and hit the done button and it pops up in CS3. From their I'll run Noiseaware on it first crop for comp if need be... sometimes I work in Lab mode, sometimes not... jeez, this is making me think and its early

I pull up curves and check to see what I adjusted for in ACR was good and if it wasn't quite enough I throw a curve on it to make it pop. I'll look over the image and see if there are any annoying sticks or bright things or odd colors that need to be cloned out or use the patch tool on any possible sensor spots. At this point I'm pretty much done so I save it as a .psd file and then another that has been re-sized for the web. I use bicubic sharper (best for downsizing) when re-sizing and I start with an image about 4096 x 2742 and I go down to 1800 x ??? and I apply a very small amount of sharpening and then re-size to 800 x ??? and save as "whatever the name is 2" I'm sure I left a few things out as I use other tools like the Gradient tool and some others.... one more thing, when sharpening guys for fine feather detail use a setting of approx AMOUNT: 50-115 RADIUS: .02 w/Gaussian blur. The first part of the shapening is whatever your eye is telling you looks good and the radius is always at that .02 for FINE FEATHER DETAIL. I will change these sharpening settings (I have custom presets) for landscape and people images. I hope this helps and thanks again for the kind words guys.

[mountaindew]

Wow. Lots of sharp and bright beautiful colors! Great shot!

[DonBo]

Is there a more beautiful creature out there? I don't know what it would be.

[buzzsaw]

Thanks MD and DonBo! I agree, they are beautiful!

[Cicada]

Awesome. I'm jealous, I'd give my left...er...well you know to get a good shot of a woody. A few years ago, I posted a picture (on another site) of a couple of wild mallards that came ashore 25 feet from where I was fishing. Got some nice shots. One of the comments was "Big deal, ducks are a dime a dozen." Nonsense, a great duck shot is a great duck shot.