Pilated Portrait

[Paul Lagasi]

This morning at a local suet feeder, standing in -12C with a wind..I managed to get this photo...this is 90% of full frame...high ISO, early morning...so I could get some DOF..eye level...hand held..its not often you can get this close to these woodpeckers...I have now been a member of BPN for one full year..tried to do my best, with all I've learned... thanks for looking

D300
300 2.8
iso-2500
1/320
f6.3
NR on background

[Art Kornienko]

I like the Pileated Portrait, would have been better without the feeder (Hilda?), and it looks slightly underexposed, but the detail is excellent and noise is pretty well controlled too.

[W T Lloyd]

Lovely sharpness for handheld...of course, the background on this one would really lend itself to removing the bit of feeder on the left - it would be an improvement, should be fairly easy to do....

[Glenda Simmons]

Agree with the others about removing the feeder...it would give a little extra room in front of his beak. A very nice portrait of this woodpecker!

[Paul Lagasi]

Thank you all, I removed the feeder, added more canvas..

Art, on my monitor at home exposure looks good, one of these days I'll save enough to buy monitor calibration software..that will probably help a lot

On a sad note, Hilda feeders are gone, not sure what happened..the man who stocks the feeders, thinks it was vandals...I have the silo feeder in my car..will try to repair it tonite
Paul

[Nate Chappell]

Beautiful detail Paul, I think your comp works better on the repost, I might give the bg another round of noise reduction.

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Really like the repost. Excellent portrait with great exposure and detail as well as wonderful eye contact. Many thanks for sharing.