Pearl Spotted Owlet

[Brian Steele-Drew]

Very overcast conditions here in Phalaborwa today. Sitting pretty close to the road in Kruger National Park [my second home] these Owls are tiny, about 20cm high on average. Pleased with the BG, shot from a vehicle using a Apex bean bag. Sorry I PP from a laptop, I need to get a good IPS monitor?!!!
7D, 400mm, f5.6, SS 800, AV, ISO 400129818

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Gorgeous image, love the BG, the eye contact is great and what an awesome pose he gave you!!! A little NR on the BG might be better.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Brian, great eye contact and pose, and against a super smooth BG. I agree with Sanjeev to run some NR on the BG, and feel you have over cooked the sharpening. The owl is oversharpened, but would like to know if you sharpened the entire image?

[Brian Steele-Drew]

Hi Stuart, selected bird and stump, NR on BG only, inverse selection and sharpened bird........no did not sharpen entire image. I think working on a laptop is my problem. Thanks for comments.

[Troy Lim]

I agree with your self assessment.
It is worth to re-process as it is a good image.

[Karl Egressy]

Maybe a tiny bit over sharpened, but a great image none the less.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Gorgeous image. The detail is amazing with a nice perch and bg.

[PhilCook]

Nice composition, love the bright eyes, background is rather nice....but yes to being a little grainy

[Shawn Zierman]

Eye contact is plenty compelling...gorgeous eyes! Nice soft, even light quality. I agree that the subject and perch are oversharpened and that fine tuning the NR on the background will improve the image. Wonder about giving the image a slight counter clock wise rotation as well, to level the eyes/face....

[christopher galeski]

nice pose,perch,nice BG,but could do with some more NR on the BG.

[arash_hazeghi]

excellent light and eye contact

the main issue here is the IQ, re the oversharpening and the noise