Another Snowy Owl

[Bill Dix]

Or rather, another frame of the Snowy I saw last week. Following Alan's suggestion from last week's post, I cleaned up the tangle of grass and sticks in the LRC. During the 40 minutes or so that I approached and photographed this beauty, this was the only moment that he looked right at me, for just a second. (This was after he had been awakened by a helicopter flying low over the beach.) I have lots of frames of him asleep or yawning. Because of the direct stare in this one, I thought a somewhat more central placement was warranted, as compared to my previous post where he was looking to our right. What do you think? C&C appreciated.

D7000, 700mm, ISO 400, 1/3200s @ f/6.3 manual.

[Marina Scarr]

Lucky you, Bill. Love image with nice whites and feather details around the face of this beauty. Like all of the added environment and it's nice to see her eyes open.

[Bill Dix]

Lucky you, Bill. Love image with nice whites and feather details around the face of this beauty. Like all of the added environment and it's nice to see her eyes open.

Thank you Marina. I'm guessing this is a 1st-year male. As I understand it, it's the youngsters that tend to push their boundaries further south during an irruption year, and the young females are much more heavily barred. But I could be wrong.

[Graeme Cox]

WOW Bill that is a beautiful image Mate. The whites are spot on sharp as a tack..

[arash_hazeghi]

nice eye contact and details, I also like that both eyes are relatively open well done. I might clone out the two oof objects on the FG sand

[Enrique Patino]

good job on this white bird on a sunny day Bill, and good comp... Looks like the light is coming at a steep angle too. I tweaked the image to see if I could get more details out of the white ... and it looks like it is doable.. would be better if done one the original file, I am sure. I am including it here FYI. and TFS

[Bill Marquardt]

Absolutely beautiful, love the eyes !!!!

[Greg Oakley]

Wow, what and awesome species Bill - and a great image as well. Very unusual for us here in Australia to see an owl on the beach!!

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Bill, excellent exposure, and I like the eye contact from the snowy. Good low shooting angle, and Im fine with the inclusion of the grasses.

[Shawn Zierman]

Great lighting, and in regards to exposure, I prefer the original. It's great that you were able to achieve this kind of eye(s) opening in brighter light quality like this. I like the framing of the subject by the grasses. Did you have to remove some grass behind the owl's head? There are a couple of processing smudges about an inch above the bird's left eye....Must have been a bit breezy for the some of the motion blur in the grasses at 1/3200! Totally envious of your owl activity out there...good luck on getting more great images like this.

[Holger Leyrer]

Beautiful image. Love the pose, eye contact and habitat. I like the open post more as the repost.
The repost shows the details to hard/strong. The OP is, in my eyes, closer in the reality.

[Bill Dix]

Great lighting, and in regards to exposure, I prefer the original. It's great that you were able to achieve this kind of eye(s) opening in brighter light quality like this. I like the framing of the subject by the grasses. Did you have to remove some grass behind the owl's head? There are a couple of processing smudges about an inch above the bird's left eye....Must have been a bit breezy for the some of the motion blur in the grasses at 1/3200! Totally envious of your owl activity out there...good luck on getting more great images like this.

Thank you Shawn. I hadn't noticed those smudges. I did remove a piece of grass that was sticking out behind his head, but missed those spots. Thanks for pointing them out; I'll remove them from the master file. It was a bit breezy on the beach, but I think part of the problem on some of the grasses was DOF.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate all the comments and feedback.

Enrique, to my eye the detail in your repost looks a bit overcooked, perhaps because you worked from the jpeg. I did a run a very low dose of Topaz Detail on the OP, but I've found that it's easy to overdo it, so I kept it to a minimum. I might have pushed it up one more notch to bring out all the detail in the whites.

[Enrique Patino]

yeah, never the same working form a low res jpeg... I am now learning new techniques and trying them out... cheers!!

[David Salem]

Thats a nice looking Owl shot, and there are allot of them out there now. Some of the best whites I have seen on a snowy. The light, the Owl, and the exposure really came together on this one. Very crisp and clean. Well done.