Loggers Friend

[Don Nelson]

An old saying "an enemy of an enemy is a friend" -- out here in the west the Barred Owl is the mortal enemy of the endangered Spotted Owl that caused logging to nearly cease. In fact, so much that there is serious discussion of actively shooting as many barred owls as possible (Discusssed by those in the U.S. Government that protect endangered species.

Finally found a Barred Owl at eye level - my only nit is that it chose to perch without the feet visible and at the end of a cloudy overcast day.
Beats all the other images I've got at a high angle up in the trees....so I won't complain.

1Div, 1/250, f5.6, 600mm II bare HH, no flash, manual mode.
No time to switch to the better performing 1Dx -- the owl flew moments after this quick image was made.

[Karl Egressy]

Nice image Don but I wish we could see either the natural light or a catclight in the eyes.
It would make the owl look so much more alive.
Other that that the pose in nice and I like the perch and background as well.

[dankearl]

Great find Don, Natural or not, I would add a catchlight.
The BG looks very nice with the Owl.

[Dan Busby]

Yes, a catch light and feet showing would be nice but any shot of a Barred Owl straight on is something to be happy about. Very nice pose and solemn-looking stare down.

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Don, Love the image design. And the bird. And the perch. But the owl itself looks mega-oversharpened overly contrasty to the point of luoking funky.... I am surprised that nobody mentioned that.....

[Don Nelson]

Thanks Artie - I'll have to look at this tomorrow. Not sure what happened but I'll open up the psd and take a look. May have used an output action that oversharpened when I created the JPG. That's a guess as I am away from the workstation and files.

Karl - there is no catchlight as the sun is down. What shows lightly is a mishmash of the sky through holes in the forest in the upper parts of the eyes. Its not good looking as a "catchlight" so go darkened through an overlay layer. I'll see what happens when I add one.

[Nick Palmieri]

I wish there was a catch-light as well. Nice pose, nice perch and nice BG.

[Roy Priest]

Don, like the pose and the complimentary background. These are the Starlings of the Owl family, pushing other owls out of their territory. Years ago we didn't have them up here now they are everywhere.

[arash_hazeghi]

very nice pose and light.

I agree with Artie that the details look very coarse as opposed to fine. this usually happens when you accidentally select a large sharpening radius or something goes wrong with the layers. should be an easy fix

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Don, love the soft light, and the Owl looks comfy perched where he is. BG looks good, and I do like the hint of grasses at the bottom of the frame.

[Don Nelson]

OK, here's a repost with some changes and an error corrected. Note its only 800 high due to restrictions of this site.
Also a lot of eye fixup to give the impression of skylight (was forest opens to sky) -- note that this is at twilight on a cloudy day so there is no "sun Catchlight".

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Don, The eyes look much better to me. The bird and the post still look crunchy and over-done. What are others seeing? Also, in the original post the grasses below the tail were more blurred.

If you can, please extract the jpeg, downsize it to 800 high < 245 kb, and post it here. I would like to see what the original looks like.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Don for sending me a clean JPEG. I started with the DPP conversion and came up with the repost. I am 100% confident that you somehow over-processed the owl in both of your posts-it was crunchy. Too much Detail Extractor or too much sharpening or not sure? But it looked very grungy. Here I ran 25% DExtr and 25% Tonal Contrast on the bird only and then sharpened for web at 130/.3/0.

Do you see the difference?

[Arthur Morris]

ps: grass clean-up and Eye Dr. Work fast and easy and a bit sloppy as not many pixels to work with. But the main thing was the over-processing of the owl.

[Don Nelson]

Thanks, Artie
Backing off on the Nick DE and TC makes the difference. I'll have to cut this back.

[Arthur Morris]

YAW. I went with 2 and 25 on the bird. Judicious is the key to success with CEP.

[dankearl]

While Arthur's repost is nice, I think a bit more sharpness on his would be optimum.
The light you added to the eye Don, is very nice, looks natural, I realize the OP was correct,
their eyes are black in most light, but your repost gave a natural "alive" look without looking fake.
Nice work by all!

[Arthur Morris]

While Arthur's repost is nice, I think a bit more sharpness on his would be optimum.
The light you added to the eye Don, is very nice, looks natural, I realize the OP was correct,
their eyes are black in most light, but your repost gave a natural "alive" look without looking fake.
Nice work by all!

Dank, With the first two crunchy posts the last thing that I wanted to do was over-sharpen this one :).

[Don Nelson]

Thanks Artie
Looking at my DE was 25 and TC was 37.
Plus a display output sharpening of Nik Output Sharpener at 5% (yes, low)

[Don Nelson]

Dan
the right eye (left from our viewpoint) of the bird was really messed up, not only by reflection but looking closer it had some pigment loss (blotchy white toward the tear duct)

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Artie Looking at my DE was 25 and TC was 37. Plus a display output sharpening of Nik Output Sharpener at 5% (yes, low)

I do not know anything about output sharpening but the CEP #s alone should not have wrecked the image....