Male Northern Flicker

[Simon d'Entremont]

Here's a Northern Flicker, the Yellow-Shafted subspecies, from Eastern Canada. You can tell this is a male by the black "moustache". I smoothed out the background using photoshop a bit, and adjustment layers for levels and brightness plus a few adjustments in Lightroom. The orientation was as shot...the tree was at an angle, as was the height and width (ie no cropping). Shot with a Canon 7D2 and 500 F4 II, ISO 400, 1/800, F4.

[dankearl]

I hope you turned your camera for a vertical?
Nice details, the BG perhaps is a bit too smooth? At iso400, just a bit of NR
would give it a more natural look.
Nice photo...

[Matthew Jones]

This is such a cool looking bird Simon and you have captured some really nice detail and colour.

[arash_hazeghi]

I love the bird, details and light but the blurred BG doesn't work here. it looks synthetic and unnatural to the trained eye. Unfortunately blurring the BG in Photoshop doesn't really work, it's better to leave it as is


TFS

[Gabriela Plesea]

Dear Simon,

Beautiful subject and I love the colours and patterns, nice PP work to bring out some lovely detail, sharpening is spot-on. Perch looks great too.

In terms of comp I would have loved a tad more space below. The BG is indeed too smooth and I agree with Arash above, it looks rather unnatural. I would love to see another version with less blur, despite those vivid colours the bird would still stand out beautifully. Just a humble suggestion, would you perhaps consider reducing the yellows and greens in the BG slightly (selectively, only the brightest areas)?

Thank you so much for sharing,

[Simon d'Entremont]

Thanks for the advice everyone. Here's another take. I wasn't quite happy with the background either, but attempted to get rid of some artifacts. Best to leave them alone. I also reduced the saturation a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't get to take this vertically and don't have any room for a differing crop.

[arash_hazeghi]

the repost looks natural, not the smoothest BG and bokeh but looks much better than the "Fake" blur

[Marina Scarr]

I am with ARash here, the original looks more natural. I love the pink hue of the feathers here. I'm not sure our feathers have this hue. Lovely male specimen.