Wanganui Camera Club
May 2012
Set of six digital images
1 Paradise shelduck f
2 NZ Shoveller m f
3 Grey Teal m f
4 Mallard m f baby
5 Grey duck
6 NZ Scaup m
Common ducks, but hyper-realistic detail: the flecks of water spray as the parry flaps its wings, the shadows of the shovellers, the teals' red eyes, the perfectly lit and marked mallards projecting forward from the dark background, the harmony of colour tones around the grey duck, the saturated blue of that so-solid water around the scaup with the superior smirk.
Every shot technically faultless, and with artistry that fascinates the eye. The last five of these would make a good set on the wall of a dentist's waiting room, to calm apprehensive patients. However the darker image and the wing movement of the paradise duck does clash with the overall mood set by the other images.
Highly commended.
You are mostly shooting sitting ducks here. Thirty years ago at Massey University, zoology teacher Lou Gurr moved his students away from the dissection of dead animals to study of the behavour of live ones. He gave them Pentax cameras and they began recording the sequence of courtship rituals of the mallards on the lake in the middle of the Massey campus.
As a challenge for next year's Adam Glascow, could you produce, to the same high standard of photographic artistry, a similar courtship sequence for one of the other species seen on Virginia Lake?