Thanksgiving Monday

Thanksgiving Monday was a beautiful day this year, with temperatures hitting the high teens. I went down near the fishing dock in Verdun around 4:30 pm to find a place to get the tripod set up to get a shot of the Harvest Moon rising over Nun's Island.
There were lots of people out enjoying the sunshine. Cyclists, dog walkers, kite flyers and even one guy playing a djembe very badly. But not bad enough to scare away the ducks. They know where their bread is buttered, and lots of people means kids, and kids mean they are getting fed.


The sun was going down but I had time to kill waiting for the moon, so I was taking tons of pictures of leaves in the water and ducks. This picture was under exposed, but I liked the reflection of the duck in the water, so I went to work.

First off, I knew there was no way i was lightening up the picture, so a silhouette made the most sense. I brought the exposure down some, nudged the blacks up and added my usual Recovery and Clarity. Then I sharpened it a tiny bit to define the edges of the duck and drove the luminance up in noise reduction to smooth out the water. I finished off with a crop to center and here's the finished image.