Female Short-Ear
Hi Everyone,
Happy New Year! Just got back from another one of my owling trips to Boundary Bay near Delta B.C. Lots of raptor activity over there right now. Here is an image of a female short-eared owl. Pretty tame and did a lot of hunting within 50-100 feet of a couple of the photographers there.
Stats: Canon EOS-1 D Mark4, 500mm f/4 lens, 1/200sec at F/7.1, ISO-800
Thanks for looking and making any comments. Take care and good light,
Steve
Last edited by Peter Kes; 01-06-2013 at 10:53 AM.
What a beautiful bird...Love the stare and details in face...well exposed but you can try and pull slightly more details in shadow...also looks like you have applied some sort of blur on BG and some artifacts can be seen around tail feathers...but apart from that I really liked this image.
Exposure looks great on my screen. Love the image. Hope you got some on a more natural perch. Looking forward to more owl shots from you.
Lovely pose, sharp details, contrast, exposure and clean background. I like the post probably because it is so rustic, it could almost be natural. The eyes are stunning. The only minor improvement for me is correcting the blurred tail, presuming it is a post capture fault. Beautiful image Steve.
Steve:
Lovely owl, nice eye contact, the post has lots of nice texture in the top which helps.
I assumed the blurred tail was motion blur because of the slow shutter speed, but if not, then redo your processing as mentioned by the folks above.
Cheers
Randy
Not sure what's going on with the tail but look forward to finding out. Steve, could you please post the full frame original?
I love the image, the bird, the perch, the sharpness, and especially the BKGR. I do not understand why you did not point the lens to right after focusing so as to move the bird back in the frame. In the same vein, a bit more room above and in front of the bird would have yielded an image that was more pleasing to me.
All in all, I am envious.
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Nice details and loved that stare, I agree with guru about more space.. still loved this.. regards, Kiran,
That is one great looking Owl!
I also think a bit more above if you have it would look nice.
Dan Kearl
Hi Artie,Originally Posted by Arthur Morris
Not sure what's going on with the tail but look forward to finding out. Steve, could you please post the full frame original?
I love the image, the bird, the perch, the sharpness, and especially the BKGR. I do not understand why you did not point the lens to right after focusing so as to move the bird back in the frame. In the same vein, a bit more room above and in front of the bird would have yielded an image that was more pleasing to me.
All in all, I am envious
Here is the full frame image. Not much depth of field to play around with at that distance. Shooting accross the ditch from the dike about 30 feet away. Only thing I can figure is that she has her tail turned slightly away. I wanted to make sure that the face and most of t he body was in focus. Also, although I can't say for sure, I suspect that my 500mm may be a bit front focused. Here is the full frame shot which is of course massive in its Raw state. I have down sampled it to meet the site restrictions.
Steve
Hi Guys,
Some of you have said that there is some kind of motion blur in the tail. I have examined it a bit closer and it is fine hairs of alternating color on the wingtips. Makes it look like blur. Please see the closeup above. Image is cropped and resampled but no other editing has been done.
Steve
Last edited by Steve Large; 01-06-2013 at 01:27 PM.
Hi Marina,
Thanks for the lovely comments. That has always been the questionable thing with my technique, my cropping. I tend to like the birds tighter in the frame where as most other people have a bit more room around the subject. It is interesting to hear how different people see the same image and I welcome any editing examples they would do on the original image.
Take care and good light,
Steve
Hi Steve,
This is lovely.
I like the tight crop myself.
The multicolored BG is also really nice.
Tail looks OK to me in the OP and I would not have even thought there was a problem. To me it looks like a windblown tail.
I also really like the weathered perch.
I love it as is! Congrats,
Gail
A well exposed image and I like the the pose, I find the original crop just a little tight. I would suggest a little more sharpening on the bird to enhance the feather detail.
Thanks Steve, That's what I was hoping I would see. Much wider here seems much more pleasing to me. Expanded Canvas with APTATS stuff and a few Quick Masks. BKGR softened up via NIK Viveza: Structure Slider to the left.
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Hi Artie,
Thanks very much for all of your efforts on this. Funny how people's perceptions of an image can vary. I can see your point about giving it more room as it gives the image a whole new perspective. As a rule, we don't usually have the opportunity to get this close to a wild short-eared owl. My intention with this one was to accentuate the facial detail and I find even on my new IPS monitor that a lot of that is lost when the bird is smaller in the frame. Thanks also for the tip about the structure slider. Never considered that as I depend on Topaz Denoise for most of my smoothing.
Take care and good light,
Steve
Last edited by Steve Large; 01-07-2013 at 12:32 PM.
The image Artie posted is exactly what I had envisioned b/c I find it more balanced and esthetically pleasing. That said, I completely understand your vision and reasoning behind it. The fact is that these are 2 totally different images. I would keep both versions.
I like what Artie did but think I prefer the OP, maybe because this is my favorite owl and it's so hard to get close to them, that I just want to drink in all those details you captured so fabulously. I find the close up much more of an engaging image.
Great Shot I like the Original but if I did it my self I may add a tiny bit more space in front.
Ps. How do you know it's a female--because it's so dark? I've heard its tough to sex SEOs.
Hi Melissa,
The darker color is a clue but also the bird was somewhat larger than the smaller lighter colored males. Most female owls are easily distinguishable because the female is slightly larger in order to carry the eggs during justation.
Steve
Thanks, Steve.
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