Tag Archives: Wood Duck

The morning was cold, dark, wet, and foggy around Post Pond. I vertured into the Chaffee Wildlife Sanctuary hoping to photograph wood ducks. Several males flew by and a female drifted in the distance barely noticable in the fog. Suddendly a group of males energed from hidding across from me and no sooner did I spot them but they were gone. So I knew if I was just patient…

After what seemed like a long time standing at the water’s edge—in fact a bit in it—I decided to try another spot farther to the north. Another fly-by or two and then a pair swam into view from downstream. They stayed in sight a while, not flushing like is so common for the species. So I got some photos.

A male swimming alone.

And a female.

Shooting JPEG and just taking what I could get would have resulted in this dull images. (This is a straight default version of a RAW file which is roughly what a JPEG capture would look like.)

But I was shooting RAW, as I always do, and adjusting the capture in non-destructive Adobe Camera Raw in Bridge resulted in a much more pleasing version of the same photo.