Arizona Woodpecker

[Joe Senzatimore]

Getting ready to head home from this amazing Alan Murphy Arizona workshop. Shot 30 different species of birds , which were all life birds for me. Alan called this the "Holy Grail" of woodpeckers. He said it is very shy and elusive , but this one just couldn't care if we were here or not. Didn't even need a blind!!!
Processed on my laptop so it might need some tweeking , but wanted to share it anyway. Hope you enjoy.

800 ISO f5.6 at 1/2500th
Cleaned up the perch a bit in PS.

[arash_hazeghi]

this one is very sweet, love the pose and details and nice BG too. tree is a bit bright and contrasty, would tone down a bit. great work, TFS

[Randy Stout]

Joe:

Nice critique by Arash, hit the high (bright) points well! The image overall is a bit bright on my monitor, esp. the tree. Easy to adjust. Was flash used here?

With all due respect to Alan, I would think the Ivory billed woodpecker would be more equivalent to the holy grail of woodpeckers. :)

Cheers

Randy

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great find, good angle, eye contact and sharpness. I would tone down the highlights, remove one of the catchlights, lower the color temperature a bit and the BG between body/tail and trunk is noticeably darker than the rest. I would also run NR on the BG.

[LouBuonomo]

Of Arizona Woodpeckers............... A little more PS tweaking will make this one.

Can't wait to get home on a real system to start processing mine...

Super experience for sure !

[Grace Scalzo]

Joe, nice!! Thanks for sharing this from the trip, cannot wait to see more.

[Daniel Cadieux]

With a bit of TLC this image should present itself quite nicely! I do wish for a bit better HA though...

Sounds like you had fun, can't wait to see more!!