First time here

New to digital photography. Please let me know how to improve this.

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Very nice sharp woodpecker shot. When it comes to nature shots, the subject has much more control of the composition than you do. My experience is that the keeper rate is fairly low due to factors such as movement, obstructions, or other things that prevent a clear shot of the subject. The solution is to take lots of shots and to find good locations for shooting. Getting close is very important.

If you are not using RAW, I would recommend it as being more tolerant of post processing with losing image quality. For output sharpening, I usually use a small amount of USM in one or more of the color channels ... sometimes all three. I have an action in Photoshop that applies the following amounts of USM: blue channel 50/1.0/0, red channel 70/0.6/0, and green channel 60/0.3/0. This seems to produce enough sharpening to improve the crispness of an already sharp image, but without leaving noticeable edge halos.

Not sure how you could have improved this, frankly. It's a terrific shot.

jgrussell wrote in post #8159241
Not sure how you could have improved this, frankly. It's a terrific shot.

So agree.

I think I would have increased DoF a bit and focused on the eye.

Very nice shot.
Get another just as good.