Attracted to a water dish with a drip from a hose, and seed feeder. They like the water more than the seeds, I think.
Canon 5D3, 600 II + 1.4X III, ISO 800, 1/400 at f/10. Simple basics in LR5 (Shadows and Highlights) and to PS to clean some seed husks off the beak and burn the ends of the perch with Viveza.
Nice shot. I like the head turn. The head looks oversized? I have never seen an Acorn WP with a pink iris? could this be a color cast, as I see pink on the belly also?
Thanks for the comments, guys! Some have pinkish irises, some blueish, some almost colorless. This one is a little more pink than most. Late-night binge?? The pink cast on the belly is reflected light from the perch and a redwood deck railing just below it.
Need to go back to see if the eye color is a M/F thing, but I don't think so. Maybe age? Caught some juvies this spring and their eyes started as a very deep gray-blue, now getting lighter.
I think the head size here is just an illusion from the angle -- they have large crow-like beaks but definitely aren't like kingfishers.
I could make it looser in the frame -- top and right are as framed, but I could un-crop a little bottom and left and easily add more top and right. They don't sit still so hard to frame and keep an active sensor where I want it.
If I think of it tomorrow I'll post one with a more "normal" head angle that shows the size better.
I can get more detail in the BG (distant trees) if I get closer with the 300 + 1.4, but this day I used the 600 + 1.4. Not sure what my reasoning was. If any.
I really like the IQ and the pose. I find this a bit tight in the frame and would loosen the crop a bit. It would be very easy to add canvas to this as the BG is so uniform.
Love that eye!
Gail
Thanks everyone! Gail, I loosened the crop, and added some canvas on the right -- now 12% bigger than the in-camera frame. Also added a little saturation and Detail Extractor to get a little interest in the BG, but there wasn't much there. The negative space looked a little empty so I decided to add a story element. (This is a branch of the oak where the woodpeckers often hang out, but it's on the left in real life.) Going too far?
Last edited by Diane Miller; 07-05-2014 at 02:41 PM.
I love the look-back pose, and the fabulous detail. Can't comment on the eye. The repost is interesting; if you keep it, you might run some NR on the background. But for my taste, just a simple canvas addition to the OP, a slivver top and right, would be better. Someday I'll travel to somewhere that offers me a good shot of these guys.
I prefer the comp on the repost also. As for the eye color, I can find no info regarding these birds having pink eyes? I have seen the bluish looking eyes of the young birds but never pink. There is no difference in eye color between the sexes. I wonder if the bird's iris is somehow gathering the color from the deck, as in the belly? If you could observe one of these pink eyed individuals at the feeder near the deck and then away from the deck to see if the color returns to normal, we might have an answer! If it's not coming from the deck, this is a very unusual and note worthy find!
Another acorn woodpecker
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