Ruth, I see your intention of creating a portrait of the duck. Perhaps a tighter crop is indicated. The colors are very vivid, and the image is sharp.   Posted: 07/06/2026 17:12:03

A nice pleasing portrait Ruth which is clear and sharp. You did not provide any tech info , but assuming you captured the image in raw you could easily recover even more detail on the duck's forehead and beak , which appear to be over exposed.   Posted: 07/09/2026 07:47:00

Hi Ruth - you did a nice job capturing identifying markings to confirm this is an American Widgeon! Gerhard commented on the over-exposure of your highlights on the duck's head and beak. You have not mentioned what your camera model is, but most cameras now have an option to set your review screen and live view screen to show the "Blinkies" (yup - a real term!). There's likely a YouTube out there to demonstrate how to set this feature on your Olympus model to flash and blink any overexposed areas on your review &/or live view screen, so you can adjust your settings to avoid overexposure. With birds, you often have to move and shoot fast so I often do a test shot in the field to determine whether I might have an exposure issue. I tend to shoot slightly under-exposed as that can be corrected whereas overexposure really cannot be recovered. I learned this from a top NYT photojournalist who often could only get one or two shots of a war or tragedy unfolding and couldn"t risk missing his shot.   Posted: 07/11/2026 19:42:45

Hi Ruth, this group is great - we all learned from each other!   Posted: 07/12/2026 23:25:30