This is an image of a Wood Duck (the drake), photographed by Mississauga photographer Susan Robertson.
The duck is captured mid-flight as it tries to get on the rock on the right. This image is quite unusual and the spectacular colours of this iconic bird give it great impact. There is a nice diagonal line in the composition as the eye follows the bird to the rock.
To achieve the sharpness, the settings were as follows: exposure 1/10000th (!) of a second. ISO was 4000, aperture was f5.6. Due to these extreme settings, there was significant digital noise in the original image. In the digital darkroom, state-of-the-art processing was therefore applied with Topaz DeNoise AI and the result proves that today the extreme settings Susan used here can still yield great results.
Ingredients: Simplicity, dynamic diagonal Composition, a Great nature Story, the Unusual and High Impact.
Thank you, Susan, for sharing this great image with us.