Duck tales at Square du Temple

My first day out with the 650D and I had a chance to exercise in a beautiful park with a pond. And what a day that was! I took over 200 photos and I was really excited with the capabilities of the camera. Of course, as a beginner I have nothing to compare it with besides the Android phone, but still, it was a great experience. There were the occasional mistakes, like pictures with too high ISO that produced a very grainy outcome, but they are a necessary part of the learning process.

The whole selecting took a lot of time, mostly because of the pretty old laptop on which I'm doing all the work. Poor thing, it's like loading a bicycle basket with three friends and trying to go to the nearby town. Anyway, I'm giving you four of the photos that made me look at the LCD screen with a wide smile. As usual, first the untouched one and afterwards the edited one.

Is it a totem? A scarecrow? You know, something to scare the birds away. If it is, it's not very successful. But it's nice. Like everything in that little pond and around it.

Here's the same photo, but with some editing. I also used a bit of sharpening but I don't know how well I did. But I'm still learning and practice makes perfect.

A duck gang. They look like a band the way they are posing. As usual, the bassist and the drummer are behind and off focus and the lead singer with the guitarist are in front. Hah! Posers!

Really, if they were a band, what would be their name? The Ducktators? Duck Bang? I guess we'll never know.

This little thing here, I loved it. This specific pose, I mean. I took a few more, but this one made me want to jump in joy.

I love the way it looks and searches. A few meters away, a bunch of pigeons were eating some bread, but this little guy wasn't interested to participate.

Another one that I absolutely loved. A fast shutter speed can make miracles and honestly, most of the times I prefer the perfect stop motion rather than the blur of movement.

When I took the picture, he was flapping his wings rapidly. When they do this, they don't give you much time. It's now or never. The only problem with the photo is that the head is almost at the very center of the frame, breaking the rule of thirds but I don't think that it ruins the result.