Barred owl in flight

[gail bisson]

Canon 7d
f 2.8 with 1.4 X converter
f 5.0 ISO 640
ss 1/1600
Almost full frame.
This is the first time I have used gaussian blur tool (on the BG). What do you think? I think it gives a bit of a 3d effect.
Comments and critiques always learned from and appreciated.

[Richard Unsworth]

:S3:

Works for me lovely bird and details.
I presume you used a new adj layer and then painted bird back, or did you select, invert and blur? You did process very well whichever you esed.
Exp looks spot on to me

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Gail, great flying angle from the owl, with a good flying posture. With regards to your Gaussian blur on the BG, I feel you have done an excellent job, as I tend to get soft edges on my subjects, (although selected very neatly ) thus I dont normally use it. So well done there. I would maybe darken the BG a touch, but I am looking on my laptop. Overall, well captured.

[Arthur Morris]

Good job but nothing stands up to a really distant BKGR :S3: The whole thing looks a bit bright to me and the owl's face a bit contrasty. Good job of focusing against a BKGR other than sky as that is always a challenge. Where? Did you use a tape of the call?

[gail bisson]

Hi Artie,
I was on Jim Neiger's boat at Lake Blue Cypress. He used a call.
Hi Richard,
I selected very very neatly with magnetic lasso, then invert then blur. I will darken the BG as suggested.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Gail, That's what I figured :).

[Mital Patel]

Gail i am sure it would have been tuff on focus withs such busy bg. you've worked good on the background blur. Never used blur so cant sa but yeah the edge of bird is glowing.

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Gail, I like the owl and her pose but the blurred BG does not work IMO. The blur that is associated with a lens bokeh is not Guassian in characteristic, so when you apply Guassian blur to the BG it makes it look unnatural and fake. The first thing I thought when I looked at the photo (before reading your comments) was that there is something wrong with the BG. IMO you have to get it right in the camera :S3:

[Jim Neiger]

Gail,

You did well to get the owl in focus and capture its flight. It isn't as easy as it looks. One method that I use on the BG is to apply very heavy noise reduction. I like the effect much better than gaussian blur.

[arash_hazeghi]

Gail,

You did well to get the owl in focus and capture its flight. It isn't as easy as it looks. One method that I use on the BG is to apply very heavy noise reduction. I like the effect much better than gaussian blur.

good points by Jim, I also use NR to smoothen the BG sometimes

[gail bisson]

Well, the experts have spoken:e3 so here is my repost
1. I did NR of 10 on BG and decreased brightness of BG by 6 points and reduced saturation in the yellows by -8
2. I had made a contrast mask on the face in the OP and Artie said the face was too contrasty so I deleted that in the repost.
Any better?

[gail bisson]

Oops, forgot to sharpen it!

[dankearl]

Nice owl shot Gail. I too, used Gaussian Blur for a bit a while ago until Arash also suggested I not use it, the NR does look a lot better to me, the bird
actually pops better in the repost, nice work.

[arash_hazeghi]

the sharpened repost with no BG blur looks much better IMO

[Melissa Groo]

Repost definitely looks better Gail! Nice job.