Another sale on Alamy of a Ruddy Duck Oxyura jamaicensis.
We have travelled thousands of miles, waited days in uncomfortable conditions, to get the right shot. And then there is the Ruddy Duck Oxyura jamaicensis.
Known in our house as the “B***dy Ruddy Duck”, it is an image that has come to haunt us. We were out on a trip taking pictures. The day was a total washout, in both senses of the word. We had been tramping around carrying all our gear for most of the day, without anything to show for it. I seem to remember that we had a promising picture of a Black headed seagull swooping low over the water and that was about it. We latter discovered that the Seagull wasn’t usable as the seagull suffered from motion blur.
The reason for the lack of shutter speed and the motion blur was that it was hammering it down with rain. We are not talking drizzle here. So being totally dejected and making our way towards a hot beverage, when we walked past this pond. Who should be swimming about having a display, but the aforementioned Ruddy Duck as he was then known.
The big question was should we take the picture or not. It was a close run thing. Stopping and getting the waterproof covers off the pack, setting up the tripod and all in the pouring rain. I seem to remember the argument went something like, we’re here, it was a long drive, but it’s raining and I need to dry out. Suffice to say taking the picture won the day.
In a few minutes we had some reasonable pictures. So we packed everything back into the bags and went in search of a warm dry shelter that served hot beverages. Later on after we had processed the image we uploaded them to Alamy.
Over the years it has become the “B***dy Ruddy Duck”, the picture never makes large amounts of money, but it has been picked up by national newspapers, book publishers calendar printers. In terms of the numbers, one of our top selling images on Alamy.
So what lessons have we learnt? If you are having a bad day, one picture could make all the difference.
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