Burrowing owl in flight, Salton Sea

[Tin Man Lee]

This photo was taken back in March. I was so into photographing burrowing owls in those days that I would drive 4 hours to Salton Sea every single weekend for a month. And the smell of salton sea didn't bother me much...

I wish I used f/7.1 or smaller to get more wings in focus.

For sharpening, I used unsharp mask 0.2 radius 150% for two rounds, and then duplicate a layer with overlay 0.2 highpass filter.

Does that look over-sharpened to you? Or the opposite? If so, please suggest what parameters and workflow you use. Thanks.

Edited in LR3 and CS5.

Canon 1D Mark IV, 300mm 2.8, f6.3, 1/4000s, ISO 500, handheld.

C&C Welcome.

[Randy Stout]

Tin Man:

The eye is beautifully illuminated, the focal point of the image.
I like the composition.

Enough detail in the BG to add some texture to the image, without being distracting (well, maybe just a bit with the large plant just in front of him)

The light angle gave some nice texture to the feathers, at the expense of some shadows on the wing tips.

Cheers

Randy

[gail bisson]

Hi Tin Man,,
The eye and head are tack sharp and look great. I wish his wings were all the way up or down though. With regards to sharpening I do not have the same recipe for each picture. I use unsharp mask as you do sometimes (no overlay though) but I also like smart sharpen at 30% a a radius of anywhere from 0.2 to 0.5. I do it once or twice.
I will often send my JPEG back to DPP and use the sharpening there for a final touch up.
Sharpening really is a recipe that varies from photog to photog!!
Gail

[Tin Man Lee]

Thanks Randy and Gail! I agree the big plant is a bit distracting. I like the eye of the owl, with that sad look, which is different from my other shots.
Gail, when you do sharpen, do you create a layer and sharpen the whole image, and brush away the background?
I did a Noise reduction on the background, with a few pixels buffer away from the bird. I found that if I NR the whole image and brush away the bird, the boundary between the bird and the background got averaged out and the color got smeared.

[gail bisson]

I use the magnetic lasso tool at a zoomed in level and "rope" the bird super accurately, then inverse the selection then apply noise reduction. It seems to work OK without any smearing.
Gail

[D. Robert Franz]

Love it... DOF is fine, you wouldn't want to bring the BG into play and as long as the eye is sharp the image is successful..

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Tin Man, this is a terrific image in my book. The way the eye and face stand out against the nice bg, perfect bird placement and great sharpness make this a winner for me.
Imo, your DOF works just great as is. Great work!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Tin Man,
Some good advice to try out above but I really feel you did a fantastic job and the BG is very complimentary. I can see this as a pano too....removing some of those lower elements with a crop. Nice luxury to have and a fine image indeed!!!

[Tin Man Lee]

Thank you all for your great comments and advice! Always can learn something new here. I will try them all out and see how it looks.