Golden-fronted Woodpecker

[Alan Murphy]

Golden-fronted Woodpecker

Alamo, S. Texas

D800, 600, ISO 800, f5.6, 1/640, fill @ -2.0

One from last week.

[Doug Brown]

Fantastic pose and perch. Love the feeding behavior and fanned tail feathers. A bit more DOF would have been nice, but it looks like you were borderline on your SS given the available light.

[Randy Stout]

Alan:

Nice timing/pose, with position and berry. Clean view of head, while still retaining a sense of a 'natural' perch works very well.

Cheers

Randy

[Holger Leyrer]

Beautiful bird, perch and comp Alan. And the colours and details are quite beautiful.
I like the berry in beak and the spread tail.

[keith mitchell]

Alan a very nice clean picture of this feeding woodpecker, berry in the beak just tops it off nicely.

[gail bisson]

This is beautiful.
Love the colors and the perch and the perfect HA and clean view of the tail. The comp is spot on,
Gail

[Marina Scarr]

Lovely image with super light and great angle. Berry in the beak is a plus and the perch worked very nicely.

[Richard Flack]

Really like the image. Nice perch and great that you got it with a berry in its mouth.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Beautiful composition Allen. I just love the abundance of berries and getting one in the mouth makes the image.

[John Robinson]

All been said really Alan. . My only personal view is that I would like to see something however blurred in the bak ground. Everything is perfect but I just feel it seems strange with the plain backdrop. Just my personal view- I agree I do it myself sometimes but try to get something in to give feel of "whereitwas " if I can.
Cheers
John

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Sweet setup and excellent use of fill flash, Alan. Echo all the positives above.
A few questions, if you don't mind:
1) With workshops, is multiple participants firing off flash at the same subjects ever a problem in terms of exposure? Or does your -2.0 FEC account for that. I suppose it would be problematic if you were using flash in manual mode?
2) Why did you pick the D800 instead of your D4? Does it allow you to be farther from the setup to get more dof since as you can crop more because of the 36mp?
3) How much of FF is this? And would you mind posting the FF original?
Thanks!

[Alan Murphy]

Sweet setup and excellent use of fill flash, Alan. Echo all the positives above.
A few questions, if you don't mind:
1) With workshops, is multiple participants firing off flash at the same subjects ever a problem in terms of exposure? Or does your -2.0 FEC account for that. I suppose it would be problematic if you were using flash in manual mode?
2) Why did you pick the D800 instead of your D4? Does it allow you to be farther from the setup to get more dof since as you can crop more because of the 36mp?
3) How much of FF is this? And would you mind posting the FF original?
Thanks!

Hey Sid,

1) The odds that you may catch another persons flash is very slim, and even if you do, it may be for one frame only. It would not make a bit of difference if you were in manual or ETTL.
2) If I have enough light I always work with the D800 for cropping ability. Orange-crowned Warblers were coming into the same setup. I can still get a good few pixels on that small bird shooting at the same distance with the same gear.
3) Here's the original RAW with no adjustments made. Just converted.
Thank you.

[christopher galeski]

What can I add Alan,beautiful image.

[Frank Schauf]

Excellent details, love the perch, great pose, very nice background, and nice light.

[Sandy Witvoet]

Absolutely awesome, Alan..... Agree with comments above.... one more thing I LOVE about this is that it shows where the woodpecker has just snatched half a berry.... leaving a bit of yellow on the "left-over" berry on the stem.

[arash_hazeghi]

excellent pose and details, love this setup