Shooting ducks in the front yard

It isn't very often that we get any sort of wildlife in our neighborhood. Sure, we have your run of the mill birds and squirrels, but nothing too exciting to photograph. Last week, my daughter was out in front of the house and came running back in to let me know that we had some visitors. There were a couple of mallards, that must be living in the nearby creek, and they decided to make a journey into the neighborhood. She wanted me to take some pictures of the ducks, so I grabbed the camera with my 100-400mm lens and went out shooting.

I got very low to the ground and shot images from the height of the mallards. I guess you could call this a ducks eye view.

It was just before sunset and I was able to get some images with the golden light from the last rays of the sun.

For this shot, I moved my position so that I could be in a position to line up the male and female ducks to have them face to face.

As with photographing any subject, it is always good to look for images that are not the obvious shots. As I was shooting images of their heads, I noticed the curly tail feathers on the male. When he sat in one position, I framed my shot to highlight the tail. I used a wide aperture to draw attention to the feathers and not the foreground or background.