We’ve been having internet problems of late which has interfered with my participation here (still not resolved), so I apologize for my absence. While the flickers come in to my feeding station, they tend to be very shy. This one (a youngster, I think) gave me quite a few shots, though the background took quite a bit of clean-up. The perch is from prunings of an ornamental birch that my wife ran across this fall.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
Anything. As noted above, I did quite a bit of cloning and painting on the background as there was an out of focus fence on the left side of the image.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Anything.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Cloned the background on the left side from the right and painted in some green on the bottom to make it fit better and mellow out some bright grass stems. Also did a fair amount of burning and highlight reduction on the birch perch.
7DII, Sigma 150-600 C @ 302 mm, Gimbal Head mounted to blind window, f/8, 1/1250, iso 1250, Aperture priority, fill flash at -2 2/3 EV. Cropped from a horizontal with just a sliver off vertically. Taken November 28th at 9:15 am under cold but sunny skies.
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Beautiful look at the Flicker. Your background work came out well; the colors complement the Flicker nicely. I could see darkening the background some to give more contrast between it and the Flicker.
Great shot, Dennis. I too am limited in participating here because I broke a couple of bones in my hand. But, I am viewing on here, and giving a thumb some. Typing is difficult.
Very nice, detailed capture of this Northern Flicker, Dennis! I like the complimentary background colors and you must have done a good job with cleaning up the background because it looks great!
Considering all the work you had to do on this one it really turned out well. I can’t tell if there are cloned areas or not. The lighting is really superb. I’ve got a family of flickers hanging out at my place but they have not been very cooperative with respect to my perch set up. And we have had a lot of fog on the nice days.
Lovely shot, Dennis. What a luxury to have a feeding station that attracts birds like this, whether they are shy or not. Love the colours throughout the image ! Cheers, Hans
