Florida Burrowing Owl

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image in Cape Coral, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED image captured at 400mm
1/2000 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV 0 ISO 360 Auto 1 WB, camera supported by a monopod
Post processed in Lightroom Classic CC, Photoshop CC 2019 and Neat Image for noise reduction
Cropped for composition and presentation

[annmpacheco]

Hi Joe, I like the vertical and the ooff foreground and BG with the grass surrounding the owl. I think a bit more sharpening on the head, one side looks a wee bit oof... Also, the whites look greyed out.. Lastly, the bottom right lone grass should take a hike, imho! Wow those gold eyes really draw you in!

[kevin Hice]

Like that direct stare Joe,over all nice agree with Ann on the whites.

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Joe. I echo the positive comments so far. I'd be tempted to crop more of the foreground...maybe up to the base of the bird. TFS

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Joe, I like the vertical and the ooff foreground and BG with the grass surrounding the owl. I think a bit more sharpening on the head, one side looks a wee bit oof... Also, the whites look greyed out.. Lastly, the bottom right lone grass should take a hike, imho! Wow those gold eyes really draw you in!

Hi Ann, not sure why one side may appear slightly out of focus on your monitor. Here is a screen capture showing the active focus point and that the depth of field was slightly over 3 inches. The right side, judging from the shadow on the eye, appears to be more shadowed. Maybe that is it. Regarding the whites I think the camera captured them correctly at that time in that light. I checked the RGB values (R 82.7 (210.8), G 82.9 (211.3), B 85.3 (217.5)) slightly towards the blue. The image was captured about 9:15 am, so the warm early morning light was past and as it gets closer to mid day the light turns to more blue so I believe these values are correct for the time of day. I did not have to recover the whites in post, the image was exposed correctly, so the whites are not greyed out from post processing. Thank you for viewing and commenting, I truly appreciated that.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

I like the image. The eyes are nice.

Green colors look good in the image.

Whites look to be greyed out. In my opinion you need to have RGB values in mid 230 for whites, else they will look grey.

TFS

[annmpacheco]

Hi Ann, not sure why one side may appear slightly out of focus on your monitor. Here is a screen capture showing the active focus point and that the depth of field was slightly over 3 inches. The right side, judging from the shadow on the eye, appears to be more shadowed. Maybe that is it. Regarding the whites I think the camera captured them correctly at that time in that light. I checked the RGB values (R 82.7 (210.8), G 82.9 (211.3), B 85.3 (217.5)) slightly towards the blue. The image was captured about 9:15 am, so the warm early morning light was past and as it gets closer to mid day the light turns to more blue so I believe these values are correct for the time of day. I did not have to recover the whites in post, the image was exposed correctly, so so the whites are not greyed out from post processing. Thank you for viewing and commenting, I truly appreciated that.

Thanks for that info Joe. To me the oof less detail is on the owl's right side specifically the face feathers around the eye to the beak...

[Joseph Przybyla]

I like the image. The eyes are nice.

Green colors look good in the image.

Whites look to be greyed out. In my opinion you need to have RGB values in mid 230 for whites, else they will look grey.

TFS

Hi Krishna, thank you for viewing and commenting. I just checked the RGB values of the whites again. Where I had checked before was not the brightest white. The brightest white is R 231, G 233, B 241, so in the the range you mention. Should I bring up the other values of white and then have to burn the brightest area, for me I would rather not. The exposure in the field is set from the brightest whites, so if I have the exposure correct for those and the image looks reasonable I tend to leave it alone. Normally when one says the whites are greyed out it is from lowering the exposure and the highlights trying to recover what was not exposed properly. This was not the case. Could I have made them whiter sure, but if I raised the less bright whites then the brightest would clip. I checked this. I would rather believe the the amount and quality of light at this time on this day reflected this value of white. If all displays and calibration were the same it would be a perfect world and we would all see images the same way. I believe what my screen is showing because it is made for photographers (Eizo Color Edge) and the calibration system is one of the best.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

You can raise the less bright whites using selective dodging or curves etc. This way you do not clip the brightest whites

[Joseph Przybyla]

You can raise the less bright whites using selective dodging or curves etc. This way you do not clip the brightest whites

Hey Krishna, thanks for coming back. You are correct I could do that, I hesitate to use a curve as that adjustment is global affecting in most cases the whole image. With computers and software the image can be changed in probably more ways than I can count, but what I struggle with when post processing is do I want to. How much do I want to change a image if the exposure was correct, a image that the histogram shows the full dynamic range and the colors look good. I guess I trust the camera to capture the image correctly unless there is an obvious color cast. Now I am trying to improve by capturing images that I do not have to do much to in post processing. Anyways, thanks again for commenting, a good discussion I hope. Maybe other will chime in.

[John Mack]

Like the out of focus foreground and the background. The bird does not looked impressed at all.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, very much appreciated.