Mallards are Ducky with Photoshop!

What do you do when you finally get a weekend off without any scheduled shoots and nothing else to do? Well, in our case, we practice our action photography by trying to capture flying ducks! Not as easy as it sounds since you have to almost predict where the ducks will be when your equipment is at optimum settings.

These are just a few shots we took over the weekend. They are all tweaked to some extent.

This male was adjusted with higher contrast and saturation . . .

This female was layered with a hard light copy at 60% transparency.

Only two layers were used with this shot. The top layer was converted to monochrome and adjusted for lightness and contrast. Then, using the eraser tool set at 60% opacity, the monochrome layer was removed from the largest male duck; this revealed most of the color from the background and gave a more subdued color (as compared to those above) to the final print. The white is all snow surrounding the birds.

The rest of these shots require their own tutorial. So, for now, we will just post them for you to hopefully enjoy.