Great Horned Owl

[Bryan Munn]

I found this owl softly hooting in broad daylight...highly unusual in my experience. No audio was played to get it started, but while taking pictures I hooted a couple of times to get it to look at me...which basically did not work as the bird seemed thoroughly indifferent to my presence. The fact that it was hooting gave it a more alert posture which I really liked. Most great horned owls I see in the daytime are upright and sleeping.

Shot was Nikon DF, 500mm F4(P), 1/200 F5.6, ISO 400. The bird was approachable but I used a 1.4 T/C for a more "straight on" angle as it was about 15 feet up. I don't know what "actual" F reading that resulted in as it is old equipment and the camera does not record that stuff....F6.3 maybe?

It was cropped a bit on the right side. In the original exposure the background directly behind the bird was sort of busy with twigs growing out of the owls head and all that....so I darkening it about a stop and removed a couple of twigs. I also removed a couple of distracting out of focus foreground branches.

Thanks for looking!

[Joseph Przybyla]

Beautiful owl, nice capture.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Can't get any better than this! love the stare, pose and those ''horns''.

[Troy Lim]

Very nice capture, it looks like the bird needs more sharpening..nice to see DF being used for bird photography.

[Bret Goddard]

Indeed, a beautiful Owl, well shot

[Rob Melone]

Wonderful composition and capture Bryan!

[dankearl]

It needs sharpened but other than that, this should have received a lot more comments.
Very nice GHO photo, great habitat.

[Bryan Munn]

I cranked up the sharpening a bit, as much as I could without getting a ton of noise. Is this iteration better or worse? I think the T/C might have softened the resolution slightly.....this image doesn't seem to respond to sharpening exactly like the others I have messed with, although my experience is limited.

Thanks for the kind comments and useful suggestions.

[Marina Scarr]

The RP definitely looks better in terms of sharpening. LOVE the environment in this one and how the owl is framed in spanish moss. Question: Was this spanish moss greenish?

[Bryan Munn]

Thanks Marina!

As far as the Spanish moss....not sure exactly how to answer that. It was a very pale, washed out green....I think the color is accurately represented in the photo....if that answers your question..