Burrowing Owls

[Bill Dix]

From Cape Coral two weeks ago.

D500, 500f4, ISO 2500, 1/400s @ f/7.1 manual.

[John Whaley]

Wonderful image Bill. Great light and eye contact with sharp focus / detail.

[arash_hazeghi]

love the pose and the stare but the extreme shadow highlight adjustment has made the plumage look unnatural

TFS

[Kalin Botev]

Wonderful light Bill! Very well done!
Thansk for sharing!

[Alex Becker]

Hi Bill, great pose and stare -- I can't tell if its just my imagination but it seems as though the pupil in the shadow is bigger than the other for both owls, very cool.

[Ryan von Linden]

Great pose and nice light, really like this shot.

[David Seymour]

Hi Bill, I can't help liking this image - if it is possible to think of owls as cute, these little guys would definitely qualify! I'm interested by what Alex wrote, in that I would say that the pupils on the shaded side are definitely larger. Presumably the pupils on the side that is catching the direct sunlight have contracted slightly. Most intriguing, I've never noticed that in a wildlife photograph before (and I've looked at a lot). I guess the pupils in these birds are so relatively large (wonder what f-stop they are?) that the effect can be more easily seen when it happens?

Cheers, David

[Bill Dix]

Thank you all for looking. Arash, you're right as usual. Even though this was shortly after sunrise, when the unfiltered Florida sun popped over the trees and lit up the owls it created more of a side-lit effect than I wanted. Overuse of the s/h greyed out the whitish spots (they're not really white). Perhaps this repost is a little better?

Alex and David, it's not your imagination. It is common for the shaded eye to exhibit a larger pupil than the sunlit one -- sometimes more pronounced than this.

[keith mitchell]

Bill on first look I thought they looked a bit over sharpened but reading the comments of others as answered this for me.I really like the way the two of them look to have there eyes on you and think I go for the repost,very nice job.

Keith.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks Keith.