I rarely photograph ducks because I find them to be uninteresting birds -- with a few exceptions. This common eider I captured in Iceland is one of those exceptions. When you take pictures of water birds, they are usually small and low on the water. That means to create a picture with any kind of impact or drama, the shooting position should be as low as possible. Shooting down on the ducks is rarely impressive. For this picture, I used a 500mm f/4 Canon lens plus a 1.4x teleconverter, giving me 700mm of focal length. I shoot from the lowest possible position without actually getting in the water. The sun was low in the sky and behind me, and fortunately I was able to capture a very small catchlight in the eye. This was necessary, or else we'd never see the black eye surrounded by black feathers.
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