If you want to spend the time and practice, might remove reed at left and portions of green leaves, again on left. And, probably not as easily done, same at lower left. Also crop some from bottom to remove water?
Thanks for sharing!
Bob
<edit> To illustrate: cleaning up reed and leaves, other floating debris, removing portion of right-most duckling, cropping entire image, re centering just a bit, adjusting color balance using Color Efex Pro, graduated gradients (CEP) both top and bottom, selectively sharpening subjects, and slight vignette to help draw attention to ducklings.
From what I saw, you could also crop tighter and the duckings could withstand some enlarging if you preferred a tighter image.
Anyway, hope this gives you some ideas but the reality: it is your image and vision - your preferences are all that count.
Hope you don't mind my taking liberty to re-work, if so let me know and I will remove the image.
And midst all that I forgot to mention I like the composition, the inclination of line of ducklings roughly dividing the image into thirds, and the reeds at center top, which I think help nicely anchor and balance the image (form a triangle of reeds to both ends of the line of ducklings) - good eye!
Hi Bob,
Thank you for taking the time, and for your kind words. I like very much the 'clean up' and the vignetting. About the color and the bottom crop I am not 100% sure. It was a fairly bright day, rework looks a tad 'dark' to me. I am a novice at processing, currently using LR 5 beta (mostly to keep my pics organized).
ternerito wrote:
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It was a fairly bright day, rework looks a tad 'dark' to me. I am a novice at processing, currently using LR 5 beta (mostly to keep my pics organized).
Luca
Probably, my preferences are toward darker, richer color...drag it into LR and adjust to contrast and/or shadows slider to tune to your taste. Perhaps better, apply the adjustment brush selectively.
Have not tried the LR 5-Beta. I often use LR4 and jump to CS6 for cloning and cleanup work, plus a variety of NIk plugins acquired along the way. I don't think the LR5 clone & heal tools have progressed to the level of CS6's (add to that the content-aware patch tool), maybe I'm wrong. Plus, I prefer the level of control and flexibility present in layers and masks when required. And then, there is the entire issue of Adobe's new 'cloud-based' system, but that is another discussion.
I like the ducks in a row.
I think a more pano crop, taking more from the top would emphasize the ducks better. There is a pleasing diagonal across the image.
Bob's clean up looks good. The darkening of the surface they are resting on adds pop, possibly at the expense of realism: your call. I would add a bit more sharpening to the ducks.
Scott
Cute factor has a way of trumping our technical/detractors mindset when we shoot, but the cleanup does improve the detractors. Something to watch for, but you still gotta capture the moment so you don't lose it.
You never know how long nature is going to let you play with her and it can be hard to see certain things when you are excited about a shot/scene, but once you've got your "safety shot" ... then you can relax a tad take a moment to "think" about how you want to get your "ducks in a row".
What do you guys think? 
