Waders, Divers and Waterfowl

Great pic. Could use a little bit more light, though.

I did already blow out the birds bright body... so I cropped the lanscape shot to portrait and some more for proportion. Then I played with highlights and midtones a bit. I know details in the black skin between eye and bill are not propperly showing despite all effords and the birds eye was to tilted down sideways to aquire a natural catchlight, just a very dull gleam... it is difficult with swan portaraits making use of light and shadow, and correcting highlights, midtones and darks any more than this results in strange postprocessing patterns rather than extra details from nature. :o(
But on the upside I like how it wears this bright fresh drops of water and the sleak orange and black look of this upper mandible which recalls a concept car on a tuning show, so it is a very pretty swan that gave it's best and I did the best I could as well to comemorate the moment it checked us out. :o)