Great Horned Babies.

[Mike Delgado]

Despite the weather forecast being windy, rainy & cloudy I decided to venture out with my gear and came back with this picture. Shot taken on the east coast of FL.

Nikon D700
Nikon 500mm
F Stop 6.3
Exp 1/400 sec
Iso 640
Flash Yes
Cloudy

125279

[Loi Nguyen]

Wow, they are so cute! Love the details and sharpness and the pose. Did you use full flash? The BG seems a bit too bright to me.

[Mike Delgado]

I used very little flash. It was a cloudy day and I was shooting up. Any suggestions to tone that down?

Thanks for your comments


Wow, they are so cute! Love the details and sharpness and the pose. Did you use full flash? The BG seems a bit too bright to me.

[gail bisson]

Kudos for a great find.
Viewpoint is a bit steep but nothing you can do about that except to bring a ladder!!
I love the owlets gazes and the way they are leaning into one another. Good IQ.
I would crop in from the RHS to minimize the impact of the tree trunk. If not against your ethics I would clone out the branches intersecting with the heads.
I can't help you with the flash question,
Gail

[Joe Senzatimore]

Sweet expresion and pose. I might have tried using the flash as the main light as opposed to fill as I think it would have given you a darker BG. It's a bit of a coin toss , but if you have the time and opportunity , it would be worth trying both ways. A learning experience.

[Dave Leroy]

An excellent find and cute pose. I like the idea of a return trip and trying out a few options.

[Bill Dix]

A wonderful find; such cute fuzzy things. I would take a bit off the right; don't know if you have anything to add on the left to balance it. I've struggled with shooting through foliage into a cloudy white sky, and don't have the answer, although Joe may be on to something.

[Daniel Cadieux]

On a bright cloudy day you will blow out the sky if exposing properly. Using fill as main light will make the light look "flashed" with heavy shadows behind objects. I find the lighting OK here, just some normal (but unfortunate) white sky peeking through the leaves. There is still a bit of red "steel-eye" in the irises that need to be blackened. Cute siblings, and I like the claws showing.

[Mark Jones]

I like the framing as is with the tree trunk and larger branches. I suppose the two smaller branches intersecting the heads and the little one in the lower left could be cloned out but they don't really distract from the wonderful expression on this cute pair. I shot a baby owl at Fort Desoto the other day that was terribly back lit so I tried doing a 3 shot HDR (-2, 0,+2 EV) to tame the background a bit. With a relatively static subject it might be worth a try and could possibly save the background. Just a thought. This is a very fine image.

[Faraaz Abdool]

Excellent shot in difficult conditions, I've always wondered what would be the solution to that problem - shooting upwards at bird in canopy against bright white sky. Good point by Mark in pane #9 with the HDR - I'm pretty interested in what that'd result in!