Great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopus major)

[Jonathan Ashton]

Image taken from my garden hide, background is my mini meadow.
Olympus E-M1MarkIII
Focal Length : 300.0mm
Focal length in 35 mm film : 601.0mm
Exposure mode : Manual exposure
ISO Sensitivity : 320
Exposure compensation : 0.0 EV
Shutter : 1/800 sec
Aperture : F5.6

ACR/PSCC

[Randy Stout]

Jon:

This one makes my neck hurt! Nice head angle, meadow with the yellow flowers nice, perch has a lot of character. Sharp with effective DOF.

Cheers

Randy

[John Mack]

The pose is great with the head turned 180 degrees. Nice to see some yellow splotches in the background. Perch and framing are right on.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Quite the gnarly perch you got there, good job finding and selecting it. Good setup, and that head turn is quite the feat! I do find the "knob" in upper left corner tight to the edge so you may want to a bit at left (and above to retain the ratio if you have it).

[arash_hazeghi]

I like the head turn and the yellow OOF wildflowers in the BG sharp with good details. if mine I'd try to eek out a bit more details from the tail blacks. weathered perch is nice too

TFS

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks for the comments everyone, I'll look again at the composition, tail blacks too ( I did do some work there but will see if I can improve).

[Steve Kaluski]

Nice one Jon, but I wonder next time if the subject was more at 'eye level'???? Nice tonal range, but please don't say you ran TPNR on ISO320????

TFS
Steve

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Jon ... very nice , what a head turn :eek3:.
No nits from my side .

TFS Andreas

[Dorian Anderson]

Light looks like it was stating to get a bit steep, but the pose you captures really minimizes the shadows. I also think the turned head adds interest, and the details are nice and sharp across the bird.
Meadow background is very nice as well.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Nice one Jon, but I wonder next time if the subject was more at 'eye level'???? Nice tonal range, but please don't say you ran TPNR on ISO320????

TFS
Steve

I could raise a tad perhaps - I was keen to get the meadow and not the area beyond it.
No I won't, tell you I have been using Topaz DNAI on this image in fact I haven't used it for some time on any images.

[Steve Kaluski]

Only because your ‘Meadow’ is so smooth, but at ISO320, (even for Olympus :bg3:) it’s very smooth juxtapose to the very sharp subject and log. So natural, all good. :w3

[Brian Sump]

Jon, late to the party.

I love the funky pose and enjoyed the touch of yellow coming on at right.

Composition is pleasing. Other than the light angle being very steep, it works well for me. TFS!

[Arthur Morris]

This one is very well done. I second all the positives and suggestions above.

with love, a