Thanks everyone for your comments, critique and words of encouragement.
These two mandarin (male) ducks are at the Washington DC zoo. I'm not a fan of shooting wildlife in a zoo (contradiction in terms!) but since I left New Orleans a couple of months ago and have been stuck with labwork most of the time, I decided to visit the DC zoo and see what it's like. If it weren't for the 70-200 VR, I could never shoot these ducks hand-held at 4.00 p.m. shutter speed 1/80 @ 300 mm! So for those who still wonder if the VR works, here's an example.
Cheers.
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 152 Avg (all users): 7.4416 Avg (commenters): 8.2979 Avg (participants): 7.1781 Avg (non-participants): 7.5205 Views since voting: 25039 Views during voting: 504 Votes: 317 Comments: 84 Favorites: 52 (view)
Holy crap I've been tired lately. This has been on the home page for what 5 days now and I didn't even 'see' it there... Awesome tones and colors! Great composition. Instant favorite and you got my wallpaper of the moment award, which lately means everyone in this household will see it for a couple of weeks...
TC
WAY TO GO!!
Knew it would win!
Just one question tho...what are the bands on the legs for?
Zoos mark all their animals. It's especially important with birds, who are relatively free to come and go if they occupy the zoo grounds but not a cage. The bands have numbers on them to allow access to a database. So say one of the brids gets sick, they just run the database and see the bird's history. And of course if the bird "escapes" and is foudn elsewhere, the band can be used to track it.
You'll even see bands on a lot of wild creatures; scientists are always capturoing, tagging/banding, and releasing wild creatures. Sometimes the tags will have transmitters so the creature can be tracked, for study of feeding behavior, migratory patterns, and the like.
This may be a record in terms of % of votes under 6; less than 40 were 5 or less. Amazingly even split on 6,7,8 votes too... NOBODY had anything bad to say about this one, basically. Good job!
The color and clarity are just amazing! Congrats on your blue - just love this image and I didn't notice they are both males til I read your comments :)
No heavy light glare. Nice color capture, very little blur, and the perfect time to click. Heavier blurred background may have helped. Overall, its a nice capture.
Love the vibrant colors on these two birds. Composition is excellent and the lighting and focus is perfect. She probably is nagging him about the food on his chest. Good shot.
nicely captured image of beautiful ducks, one on left looks almost as if he had been shot, highly illegal if true, but great color, nice dof, one of my favorites for sure
8 - Good shot. Excellent colors and contrast control. Nice fairly simple background. Criticism; not much, maybe a little more space on the right, not sure. Up to 8 from 7.
I only comment on my lowest and highest rated photos. This is a 10 for me. I like the focus and the colors, and the action of the birds. There are similar photos to this, but they can't hold a candle to this one. Good shot.
This is an absolutely beautiful image. Great colour, perfect clarity and so much story. I envy those who have the skills to capture such opportunities when they arise. Wow - from me at least.
Love comes in pairs!
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one no less!
