Red-bellied Woodpecker

[Barry Ekstrand]

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A Red-bellied Woodpecker, taken at the Attwater Prairie Chicken Wildlife Reserve a couple of weeks ago as we were walking to the blind.

Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 500mm f4L II, Canon EF 1.4x III
700mm, f5.6, 1/2500 sec

Any and all comments appreciated.

Barry

[Shantanu Ambulgekar]

Wow... I like the BG. fantastic colors... In my honest opinion, I would have removed the branch of the tree which is in front of the bird, because its blocking the way and it is in the middle of frame.
Image is class ... I liked the crisp details of fruit.

Regards,
Shantanu Ambulgekar.

[Jerome Berthelemy]

hi Barry, BG color is too "perfect" and unnatural for me. It makes me think that you trim the bird, the leaves and the branch of the tree and mix it with another background...
Really interested to see the original image because the bird itself is a good and beautiful catch :)

Regards,
Jerome

[Shawn Zierman]

That is some very interesting lighting...reminds me of pre-big thunderstorm evening light. I enjoy the composition and the subject size in the frame....nice natural? food source too.

[Barry Ekstrand]

Shantanu, Jerome, and Shawn,

Many thanks for your comments. The background has been replaced as guessed. The day was a bright overcast morning so the actual background was a featureless bright grey - see below for the original. I decided that getting some color in the background was necessary to save the photo, experimented with various shades and in the end tried to make it a compatible warm glow (indeed thinking of the golden hour). For what it is worth, the BG that I inserted was a blurred foliage shot that I then tweaked the color on and then ran heavy NR on.

Here is the original, I would be interested to hear if anyone likes it better than the attempt to make it better. Thanks for the input!

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