Great Horned Owl

Went back to a spot I had seen a pair of GHO with large fledglings last year. I found the pair by accidentally flushing the male (I think) - subject of this image. The female turned to be injured (found her later) and no chicks. This image was tough to expose. The bird was in the shade on a sunny day. Wonder if the halos @ the greens bother you.

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7D, 500mm @ f/4. 1/640, ISO 800. HH. Cloned a distracting branch from the left side and cropped for composition.

Comments and suggestions are welcome

P.S. Once I discovered this bird. I used audio to more quickly assess the site. This was from seconds of turning it on.

I like the eye contact and details, looks like image has gone through extreme highlight recovery. Colors are washed out and whites have turned grey, there is strange blue halo around the ears and upper right corner also shows some clone artifacts.

Still a nice shot, I also like the talons.


TFS

Quote:

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Originally Posted by arash_hazeghi

I like the eye contact and details, looks like image has gone through extreme highlight recovery. Colors are washed out and whites have turned grey, there is strange blue halo around the ears and upper right corner also shows some clone artifacts.

Still a nice shot, I also like the talons.


TFS

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Thanks Arash

upper right corner are distant leaves.

in your opinion...washed out colors in general, or the bird itself?

not sure I agree that whites are grey.

I could try to remove some of the blue cast, but it does not bother me here.

Thanks for your feedback. I appreciate it very much

I used a saturation layer to reduce sat on the blues and that may help with the blue halo issues Arash mentioned. I also bumped vibrance a bit using a vibrance layer. Does that help? Thanks!
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Looks pretty good to me Enrique. Great stare right at us and the detail and color are better in the repost. I see what Arash is talking about. Maybe shot a bit over then brought back. I like it.

David, this is a screenshot of the raw file in lightroom 5. Almost all the "blinkies" are in the sky-background. I thought I would try to see how it came out and I sort of liked it. Thanks for your comment

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