I was actually waiting on waterfowl along a lake shore when this Pileated Woodpecker landed on a log 20-25Fft in front of me looking to get a drink of water. It was a perfectly clear morning. I have a few decent images of this bird but none with the level of black feather detail I got in this case. I was barely able to get the whole bird in a single image so this is a about a quarter crop. I intentionally burned the whites a little. I do this routinely on birds with black and white. The lighting was so good in this case I probably didn't need to. The backdrop was water reflections from trees across the lake. I would have preferred blue. I guess it could be changed in software easy enough.
Nikon D500, 500mmF4VRII, TC-14EIII
F8, 1/1000s, iso500
Great details and nice colors here Jack. IMO the composition is a little odd and I'd try a vertical crop giving more room on top and to the right of the frame since it looks really tight in the frame now, I also wish for a better head angle. This is a nice picture with lots of potential. That's only my opinion and I'm looking forward to see what others will say. Thank you for sharing.
I was going to post a full body image first but a 1200x800 pixel compressed image just doesn't do justice to the feather detail no matter what method I use. I posted this crop more or less to illustrate the true level of feather detail.
Agree with you with regards to excellent feather detail. Not often that one can get so close to a pileated!
I would definitely choose a different comp for this image even if it is all about feather detail!
Reds look great too,
gail
Pileated Woodpecker portrait
Reply With Quote
