Sometimes its just plain tough to find someone to watch the kids. If you’re the mother of some young ducklings and no other ducks are available to keep an eye on them, what do you do? It seems in this case the mother duck selected to leave a few of her own with neighboring turtles, over 20 of them! It made for a rather cute image and offered an interesting contrast between the downy feathered ducklings and hard-shelled reptiles.
It was actually a challenging image to make because this humorous scene was actually a bit further away than I like to work from. The composition required some width because I didn’t want to leave any of the turtles out. As a result, I had elements in the foreground and room above the log that I didn’t think added visually to the image. The scene was also in fairly heavy shade and so the light level was lower than I liked. Even using a sturdy tripod, image stabilization on the lens, and a somewhat elevated ISO, keeping the lens (Canon 500mm f4.0 lens with Canon TC1.4X = 700mm of glass total) steady was tough.
Ultimately I had to do some levels and curves adjustments in Photoshop and some color correction to overcome the somewhat muddy tones from all that shade. I do like the image though, it has a lot of character and tells a fun story. As a print, it fulfills the visualization I had in the field of a panoramic representation. The finished print is 7×14″ and will be mounted and matted to a standard 16×20″ ($79).
"Baby Sitters" 7x14 inches
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