Woodpecker photos

[Chris Hawes]

I've recently set up a feeding station to attract woodpeckers and nuthatch to photograph - these are my first attempts from the weekend.

No sign of any nuthatch at the feeding station yet, but they are in the area, so hopefully they'll find it soon.

These were taken with a 100-400mm lens and are uncropped. I recently broke my 1.4 converter and am having to make do with less range for the time being.

Any advice/comments would be appreciated. I realise I need to move the post slightly to ensure it is in the sun for longer (the sun went behind a bush after about ten minutes in the hide!) - this will at least give me some better light. I also think these shots are under-exposed, i.e. not showing enough detail in the darker feathers.

[Dan Salter]

Not a bad start mate, both are out of focus so could do with being sharper however the second of the two is better. Personally i would like to see you remove the wooden outspill from your drilled (and presumably filled with food) holes on the back of the trunk for a more natural and realistic shot?

[tameblackbirds]

lovely images

[glsammy]

Hi Chris.

I hope you don't mind, I've had a little go at one of the shots. I've re-loaded it under your name.



Not sure if it's any better, but I don't think your exposure was far off perfect. I can see excellent detail even in the darker feathers.

[Dan Salter]

Thats much better and sharper

[Chris Hawes]

Nice one Graham, that's loads better! How did you manage that?

[pressld2]

They were both good shots to start with Chris but I agree that Graham has really lifted the one he's worked on.

Do you give lessons Graham? You did something similar to one of my eider duck shots and for the life of me I can't get it to look as good as you did.

I take it the feeding station is just a section of silver birch trunk. How did you get hold of it? Did you just harvest it from a local wood? There are a couple of dead silver birches in my local wood but the trunks are a bit large for me to manhandle into my car! Well worth the effort anyway.

Dave P.

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by Chris Hawes

Nice one Graham, that's loads better! How did you manage that?

Thanks Chris.

Firstly I check the levels in Photoshop, just to see if it was under or over exposed. The Historgram showed it to be nicely balanced.
I then adjusted the curves very slightly, to bring out some of the detail in the shadows.
After flattening the image I checked it with the Shadow/Highlight tool. This again helped with the shadow detail whilst holding back the highlights.
I masked out the background and ran neat image over it to smooth it down, and also applies some contrast adjustment,just to the background.
I reversed the selection so that the tree and bird were selected and finally I applies some sharpening not with unsharp mask as most use, but with Smart Sharpen which I prefer. I used settings of 100% and a Radius of 1.0 pixel. Advanced and Remove Lens blur selected.
The amounts vary according to the image size and quality.
The change in sharpening certainly helped lift the image, and changed what looked like an slightly out of focus shot into a nicely in focus one!

Good shots by the way Chris! I'm very envious of your set up, I've not a chance of getting any Woodpeckers around here, or Nuthatches, at least not in my garden.
We have at last has some success with Goldfinches though, for three days running we've seen a small group at my feeders. They don't stay long, but at least they know where we are. It's only taken three years to get them, now I need to work out how to entice them often enough so I can try and get a shot of them.

[Chris Hawes]

Thanks Graham - I really appreciate the time you've taken to do that, and explain what you did. That one post may have a big impact on some of my finished photos!

Dave - I just looked around for a suitable sized fallen branch/tree. I wasn't particularly looking for silver birch, but I was pleased to find it. It actually isn't very big, and wasn't too difficult to put into position.

[Keith Talbot]

great shots chris and great a great lesson in photoshoping graham,

graham,which version of photoshop are you using?

its something im sure we all wish we were better at using,i never seem to find the time to sit a play (and learn)