Waterfowl

The other night while sifting through old hard drives in search of nice photos, I found a photo of a duck that was...  well... not so great but it had potential. I loaded it into my editing and post-processing software... I still wasn't too optimistic that I could save the photo or make it interesting though.

I shot the photo one early morning while out on my kayak... it was foggy... the duck was hiding in the dark under some brush hanging out over the shore of the lake... there was very little contrast and almost no color... but, when I zoomed in to view the duck's head, the focus was pretty good considering the amount of fog and lack of contrast and color. I had a digital negative to play with though so I wondered if I could make something of this image. 

After using a few different techniques over the course of about an hour or two, I managed to find a way to produce an acceptable image. I don't have too many good photos of ducks so I was excited to have found this one lurking on an old hard drive!

Sometimes, after I come back into the house after kayaking for a couple of hours early in the morning, I hear some loons outside the house while I'm cooking breakfast. This particular morning I heard some loons so I ran out with my camera in hand to find a pair of loons navigating the foggy lake as the sun rose...

I can tell by the high angle of this shot that I was still up on the deck high above the water... still a nice shot!