I am lucky to have a fine looking, recurring male Pileated Woodpecker backyard visitor and I managed to catch him getting a blast of sunlight on his very cool looking head yesterday (which was the inspiration for Woody Woodpecker… can you see it here?). Fortunately, he really tolerates my presence.
Specific Feedback Requested
I am particularly interested in the balance of the subject’s lit up head, and his dark body in the shade. Does this look about right?
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
D500, Nikon 200-500 lens, Nikon 1.7 TC, monopod, 1/1600th, f 8.0, 550mm, ISO 825, AI Clear, cropped to 2700 x 3155.
Very nice capture of this guy, Dave. I have one that hangs around but isn’t nearly this cooperative. In answer to your question, that’s kinda tough light in which to shoot, exposure-wise. I like the photo very much, but his body might be a tad “washed out”? Still, a fun photo.
I really like the pose here. Wonderful bird indeed.
I took a look at your JPG and noticed that the whites on the head and the sunlit tree in the upper right are blown quite a bit. Not sure if you have a RAW file, but you might be able to recover those highlights. I think the would do a lot to help with the overall look. I agree with Terry that the body looks a little flat. A bit of contrast or black adjustment would fix that quite nicely. I hope you have the RAW file to work with because this image is really nice.
Definite improvement on the sharpness and color balance. This is a very difficult exposure and there are a lot of distracting elements in the image. Not sure you can do much about them. Maybe a soft vignette? But these woodpeckers are very difficult to photograph.
