Snowy Owl Flight Close-up.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Image taken on January 1st, a great New Year's morning spent with some local photography friends. We had fantastic light, and great colours. A bit on the cool side with temperatures around -25C...but after a while you do not feel the cold anymore anyhow:bugeyed:. I love the way the Snowy Owl's face looks like soft velvety fur!

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/2000s., f/7.1, ISO 800, handheld, about 70% FF (right and bottom edges as framed in-camera, cropped top and left to balance it out), lifted the shaded far eye, NR to the BG. Baited.

[David N Smith]

Daniel, I saw this when you pasted it on facebook and liked it then but seeing it here is just that much better. The images you have posted of the Snowy Owl are fantastic. I love the look this one is giving you.

David

[Aidan Briggs]

Great job on the crop, these are tricky to make look good when the wings are clipped. Perfect sharpness and exposure as usual. The right eye being partly obscured is really bugging me, nothing you could've done about it, but I wish we could see it better.

Looking forward to more!

[Enrique Patino]

Great image Daniel. I agree that you did a great job with the crop given the clipped wings... I don's mind the eyes... and no, I am not going to post one with any tweaks! :c3::t3

[Shawn Zierman]

Wowser! Love every aspect of the image. Tons of impact and the light has some rich winter warmth to it. What you achieved in the background is really sweet. Understanding flight path and light angle, and having someone help with the feeding really helps create this kind of image....requires a fair amount of forethought that is not necessarily obvious, but never the less impressive.

[MohsenVahedipour]

Excellent incoming pose with great light, IQ & BG. I like your selected composition as well.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Dan, in your face stuff here, as if the snowy is right on top of you - great work. Those yellow eyes always intrique me, they stand out so well against the white plumage which you have nailed with the exposure.

I must not delete images where I have cut off wings with the subject being too close - you have shown what can be achieved.

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the IQ, details, exposure and BG. It is funny how the BG almost looks inverted with the sky blue on the bottom, is it water? Well done Daniel!

[Ashleigh Scully]

Wow this is amazing. Its nice to know its OK to sometimes crop wings off if the photo is as good as this. Great sharpness and what's better than a Snowy Owl's clear yellow eyes!

[Daniel Cadieux]

Thanks guys! As for the cut wings, I'm glad you like the crop that way...this is actually the image I had in mind and waited for a sunny day and higher shutter speeds to bring out the 500mm lens to try and get this close up in flight image. Jim, this is the snow, it had a bluish cast to it (as it often times does with the naked eye) but rather than negate it I decided to leave it as is.

[tomroper]

Great image! I have to agree with others positive comments. How did you bait, if you don't mind sharing?

[Loi Nguyen]

Daniel, love the close up details of the face and the crop works well. The exposure and PP are top class. The only thing that I would wish for is just a tiny head turn so that we can see the other eye more clearly. Great job. Loi

[Rachel Hollander]

Daniel - your vision paid off. The comp really works well, beautiful light and details.

TFS,
Rachel