Snowy Owl Roosting in the Field

[Raymond Lee]

Photographed at south of Fort Saskatchewan in the Strathcona County, Alberta, Canada. Me and two other photographers attempted to go low and slow attempting to work our way through the snow-covered field for some front lit lighting on this male Snowy Owl. This owl allowed us to go as close as within 50m radius before it took off. Thankfully, the lighting was fairly diffused due to a thin layer of clouds covering the sun.

In terms of processing, it took me a bit of time to get the white balance correctly. This is about a 70% crop from the full frame. I'm sure there will be some comments about distractions, but I left it the way it is (for now) as the short grasses are minimal and it is what it is part of the environment after all.

Canon EOS 7D | Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS + Kenko 1.4x Teleplus PRO 300 DGX + Canon Extender EF 1.4x II
Manual mode, 1/800 sec., f/8, ISO 640

All C&Cs are welcome!

Thanks,
Raymond

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Hey Raymond, very nice low angle shot. I agree about leaving the short grasses in. If I were to clone any out it would be the ones that are oof in the foreground. I might brighten up the eyes just a tad.

[Charles Mills]

I agree with Miguel on all points. In particular, the OOF grass in the foreground. It just doesn't seem to fit in quite right.

[David Salem]

Nice shot of this cold looking owl. Exposed well and sharp. Wish the left eye were open a bit more. I would crop a fair amount off the bottom. Great work.

[Shawn Zierman]

Very nice low angle image of this resting snowy. I like the grasses and would not change a thing there.
Just wondering why you did not try and get directly on the light angle, as it appears the light is coming from
the right hand side and the owl is somewhat side lit...?

[Nick Palmieri]

Very nice image. Agree with cropping something off the bottom but I would leave some of the grasses in. TFS

[Raymond Lee]

Thanks for the above suggestion. Not quite about cropping off the bottom due to the angle and the perspective, but i like the idea of removing the OOF grasses.

Very nice low angle image of this resting snowy. I like the grasses and would not change a thing there.
Just wondering why you did not try and get directly on the light angle, as it appears the light is coming from
the right hand side and the owl is somewhat side lit...?

I did mention that we tried working our way (parallel to the owl) for front lit lighting, but the owl took off before we got a chance to do so.

[Shawn Zierman]

Did not read the text carefully enough...my bad.
Thanks for the reply.

[Raymond Lee]

Here's the re-work of the above photo:



I recropped the shot even more and cleaned out any OOF grasses in front of the owl. If I can go further, I could probably remove that focused grass right in front of the owl too, but I think it's probably good enough, after all, it's part of the environment. Thanks for all C&C!

Cheers,
Raymond