Brotherly love? or Hey, this is my perch!

[laurie golden]

The juvenile burrowing owl on the left just flew in to join the other on this not so natural perch. There were several rusty pieces of metal laying around in this agricultural area, no natural perches.

D3S, 500mm plus 1.7 converter for 850mm
ISO 640, f8, 1/640 sec.
From a vehicle on bean bag.
Manual Exposure.

I added a little more sky on the top and right.

[Mike Milicia]

For me, the wonderful behavior/interaction here outweighs the perch considerations.
Nice comp and excellent detail and exposure.

I'm seeing a significant green cast.
Here is a repost where I used a Color Balance adjustment and added 20 points of magenta ... see what you think.

[Mark Corpe]

Great capture, I have to agree about the green cast in the original post, the edited image is definately better looking IMHO.

[Melissa Groo]

What a beautiful image, I am fine with the perch as it is after all part of their natural habitat these days. I love the poses, the comp, and the ambiguity suggested by your title, as it really does look like their interaction could go either way! Mike did great on the repost, though I would pull back on the magenta just a touch.

[laurie golden]

Mike,

I like the color in yours and have to admit that I thought mine needed a little punch but I do not understand how to decide what to do. I would never have thought of adding Magenta. I did add a little color pop using Topaz Adjust which I think added some red/yellows to the original. Any words of wisdom for me?

[Mike Milicia]

Hi Laurie,

Getting the color balance right can be a real challenge in some cases. The first bit of advice I would offer, which you may already be doing, is to set the WB on your camera to Auto. This is by no means foolproof but I find that it often gets me very close or even right on to the correct color balance. When this does not work, the first challenge is recognizing that fact when viewing your image using the "As Shot" color balance. Recognizing color casts is not always easy but it is something that you will get better at over time.

If you are unsure about a particular image, the first thing to do is look for something in the image which you know to be a neutral color, i.e. a shade of gray, including white or black, and click on that color with the eyedropper tool in ACR or LR. This will alter the color balance so that whatever you clicked on will be rendered as neutral. If the image was captured in flat light or bright sunlight, this might work very well. However, this method is useless in other situations, e.g. if your image was captured in warm light or there is nothing neutral in the scene.

If the eyedropper trick does not work but the color balance still seems off, then try playing with the color balance sliders in the RAW converter. Make fairly substantial changes and see if it looks like you are headed in the right direction and, if so, try again with smaller changes until you get the color the way you want it. Another option along these lines is to take the image into Photoshop and create a Color Balance adjustment layer which will give you more sliders to play around with.

But, again, the biggest problem is being able to recognize that their is a color cast in the first place. In the case of your image here, I could tell there was a color issue as soon as I saw the thumbnail because the sky was not any shade of blue that I have ever seen in real life. From experience, it seemed to have a green cast, so the first thing I did was to add magenta, which is the opposite of green. To eliminate a color cast, you add the complement color. You can see the colors and their complements in the Color Balance adjustment panel. My first guess is not always correct, in which case I start playing with the sliders to see what makes the image look more natural. But, in this case, as soon as I added magenta, things looked better.

I do not always recognize color casts either and thankfully others sometimes point them out. And, in some cases, I suddenly notice a cast after having had an image around for months! But it is something that you will get better at over time as you work on and view more and more images.

Hope that helps a bit and hopefully others will have some different or better advice.

[dankearl]

The pose and the birds interaction is so nice. It Took me a few seconds to even notice the perch!
Outstanding behavior photo.

[PhilCook]

Concur entirely with Melissa's post, but yes color tones can be difficult varying from computer to computer, and as Mike indicates it can be hard to judge if indeed it is a color cast or natural light from setting sun etc, all gets rather confusing at times.

This a sweet shot and I'm 100% jealous that you lot OS seem to see so many Owls in daylight, someone should tell your Owls they are meant to be nocturnal, and/or buy a new watch.

Loving the very endearing look from the under bird, detail and composition in frame perfect, 10/10

[laurie golden]

Mike,
I always have my camera set on Auto white balance. And all of my photos are always a little cool. The temp on this one was 4650. When I tried to correct WB in ACR it turned the sky a little violet and the temp went down to 3900 so I thought that must be wrong. I guess I just did not see that the sky was not a natural color in my original. When I look at my processed photo with saturation at 100% there is a slight amount of green on the beak and a few edges of feathers but the sky looks blue. Thanks for the explanation of your process, I'll keep trying.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Laurie, well timed to capture the landing of the owlet on the left, and the 'loving' look of the other owlet puts this over the top. Good detail on both, and I like what Mike has done in the repost.

[Rachel Hollander]

Laurie - sweet pose and comp. Repost deals with the cast well and Mike's given good advice about spotting them too. One thing no one has mentioned is that I see a very faint band/blotch of yellow in the upper right corner on both the op and rp. I'm not sure if it is where you added the canvas.

TFS,
Rachel

[Jack Breakfast]

Lovely, Laurie! I love the perch also! I would consider burning in the perch's faucet (is that the correct term?) as it seems a little bright to me. Give it a little once or twice over with the old burn magic and you'll be righter than rain, just wait!

[Satish Ranadive]

Marvelous image.Magnificent moment captured.Loved landing pose of one as well as other one looking up with nice expression.
I like the great details,nice bg and lights.

[arash_hazeghi]

what a sweet interaction, Mike's repost took care of the color cast

well done

[laurie golden]

Thank you al for your comments and suggestions. Always something to learn here, I will try to benefit from the advise.

Rachel - I did clone sky to the upper right corner but I do not see the yellow but do see that the sky is not uniform in color (looks like some white to me) but then, I did not see the green!

Jack - I have been trying to figure out what that pipe was for. The old watering system for the area were canals with hoses to get the water into the fields, I could not see how this fit in. Now everything is pivots and the old stuff is just laying around. Thanks for the burning suggestion.