Watery waterfowl: or, “A Pair o’ Dux”

Sunday morning.  I should be sleeping right now.  I should be rolling over and slapping the alarm clock for daring to wake me up on a day of rest.

And yet, I’m driving over to Washington Park.

For some reason, this warm weather has drawn several waterfowl to the lake at Washington Park – ducks and geese and mallards and the like.  I’ve captured some photos with my film cameras and with my cell phone camera… now it’s time to break out my top-line shooter, my Nikon Df, and go duck-hunting.

Heck, I even stopped at the local bait and tackle place in Watervliet and purchased some nite crawlers, because I surmised that the ducks and geese were getting tired of stale bread crusts.

It’s Sunday morning and here I am.  And sure enough, there’s three sleepy ducks along the shore at Washington Park.

I sneak up as close as I can.  One of the ducks turns his back and wiggles his tail feathers at me.  Great.  See if that makes me switch my insurance company to Aflac or not.

The other two ducks were still on the shore, sitting comfortably and almost oblivious to my presence.  Heck, they didn’t even munch on the nite crawlers I tossed in their general direction.  What’s the matter, ducks, you’re not interested in Watervliet worms?  What, you want the high-class worms from Green Island instead?

No matter.  I’m not here to talk with the ducks.  I’m here to shoot them.

No, not like Elmer Fudd.

And in doing so… I got this nice shot.

Now although this is a nice photo in and of itself, it needs some serious cropping.  The ducks are too small in the photo; and the far shore of the lake also reveals several parked cars, including a black 2006 Chevrolet Cobalt SS.  That’s not going to work.  I’m photographing ducks, not Blackbirds.

Great.  Now all I need to do is crop out the far shore, crop in a little with the ducks, and…

I’m looking through my camera chip.  I took several different shots of the ducks, in fact I had the camera on “burst mode,” so that every time I pressed the shutter, the camera took multiple pictures.  And the photos look almost identical – only the rippling water shows a difference in the images…

Well, I suppose these four shots are virtually identical…

Except for the rippling water…

Hey, you don’t think…

I didn’t bring my tripod with me, and I did try to keep my hands rock steady still when I took this picture…

… but could I find a few images that I could combine into a cinemagraph?

You bet I could.  And I did.

There it is, folks.  It might seem like a paradox, but I got me a pair o’ dux.

This is why photography is so much fun.  You can come up with one idea … and in the process of executing that idea, you come up with something entirely different.

And doing so feels really, really good.

Know what I mean?