Barred Owl

[Bill Dix]

I was driving down a back road in New Jersey's Great Swamp NWR with some other birders over the past weekend when this guy flew in front of the car, and perched in a nearby woods not too far from the road. He picked a spot that was somewhat backlit, and with some oof foreground twigs creating a few hazy spots that I couldn't avoid. But it's not often that I get to see an accessible owl in daylight (or anytime, for that matter), so I was pleased to get a few frames.

D7000, 700mm, ISO 800, 1/800s @ f/7.1 manual, gitzo and mongoose.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

What a lucky find you have here Bill. Simply beautiful looking owl and you did a great job under the conditions. Looks as if you had enough side light resulting in very nice detail and catch lights.

Geoffrey

[Diane Miller]

Gorgeous! The twigs in the BG are a perfect setting - they give a sense of place without being distracting, and are just the right amount OOF.

[Holger Leyrer]

Wonderful. You have made a very good job. Perfect exposure control. Like the details, pose and catch light in the eyes.

[Karl Egressy]

Great find and an excellent image, Bill. I find it very important with this Owl to have natural light in the eye and you have it.

[gail bisson]

Will you be my chauffeur?
Wonderful opportunity well seized.
The image seems a bit flat so I would add a couple of points of black to the neutrals in CS5.
I am OK with the branches but would evict the one coming out of the head. And really, if you are OK with cloning one out, I would get rid of them all!!
Gail

[keith mitchell]

Hi Bill, we get lucky sometimes, it's really good that you got the light in the birds eye ,think this makes a very nice image,Bg twigs are no problem for me, would be very pleased if it was mine.

Keith.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the comments and suggestions. In this repost I've added a few points of black to the neutrals as suggested by Gail, and then brightened up the subject just a bit. Not sure I see much difference but it may look a tiny bit less flat. I've also taken out the twig coming out of his head. I had pondered this before but left all of them in. I actually liked the twigs as breaking up the bg a little but admit that the one I removed was a distraction. In the OP when I mentioned oof twigs, I was actually referring to a few near me that I couldn't work around, and that caused some blurriness on a few parts of the image, most noticeably on the branch and tail. I tried to mitigate them by using a Multiply brush at low opacity. No one has commented (yet) on those spots so maybe they're not too bad, but they bother me. Several mentioned the catchlights. I did a fair amount of dodging to bring them out in the OP. And also, forgot to mention that I removed an oof tree trunk on the far left side.

[keith mitchell]

Bill I like the repost, and your comment makes very interesting and informative reading .

[Grace Scalzo]

WOW! Love this one, Bill, and the tweaks that you did to the repost make it look better. I sure would be happy with this one.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks Keith and Grace.

[Diane Miller]

You fooled me with any OOF FG stuff cleaned up -- I can't see a trace of it.

[Bret Goddard]

Nicely done both times Bill.....