Why are some of the most beautiful birds to photograph in the most difficult places to photograph? I found this owl about 25 feet off the trail I was walking on sitting quietly allowing the world to pass it by. In the deep shade it was blended perfectly. Shortly after this image was taken it's eyes closed to sleep. I pushed the shutter speed and aperture as much as I thought possible, still the ISO was 3200. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.
Nikon D7000
Nikon70-300mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF shot at 300mm (450mm FFE)
1/320 F/5.6 ISO 3200
Post processed in Lightroom 5
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
Just gorgeous, color and detail. Great work finding it and better work capturing it. I might be tempted to darken the perch. Nik's Viveza can do an amazing job of masking something like that. Or maybe just brush on a quick mask and have a go with Curves or Levels. Darkening could slop over into the BG below the branch, which is lighter than the rest of the BG.
Love that Owl, I really like the pose and it's perch. Too bad you had poor lighting but you gotta work with what you have. I notice a bit of green hue on the lower breast feathers and a bit on the underside of the branch but I'm a newbie so could be wrong.
I tried unsuccessfully to get a good shot of a Barred Owl a couple of weeks ago but as you mention, dense hardwoods and he wasn't very cooperative.
Looks pretty good for 3200. Nice pose and perch. The image feels just a tad bright to my eye; maybe take just a tiny bit of brightness out of bird and perch, and move the bird just a tad to the right? And maybe some more NR on the BG? All in all, though, a very nice capture under tough conditions.
Thank you all for viewing, commenting and offering suggestions to improve this image. All of you were spot on with your suggestions. I corrected the green color cast, darkened the bird, perch, and lower right hand corner of the background. Here is a RP with those edits.
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
You could go a tad darker, still, in the corner. Removing the yellow area looks like it was done with a global adjustment -- the whole image now has a bluish cast and low contrast. You could go for just those two areas with masked adjustment layers. They need tp be fixed relative to the rest of the image.
Nice shot of this beautiful owl. Good job finding it in a open spot, not easy with these guys. The detail looks great and the pose, perch and the BG look very nice. You went from a green cast to a blue cast.
I think warming up the last post and then adding some contrast and saturation would look nice. Well done.
Very nice owl and sharpness. Love the pose and perch too. The above comments are excellent. The RP looks Ok to me in terms of brightness, but David is correct with the blue cast. These color casts are so tough to spot, but becomes so obvious when someone else calls it first! Loi
I like the view of talons and eye contact is good too, you made the most out of this challenging situation so good job! IQ is not great though, you have applied quite strong NR which makes plumage look a bit unnatural to the trained eye, it has the so-called "Watercolor" effect while the BG is still grainy. It's not bad but not quite there yet, contrast is a bit washed out as mentioned. you may have better luck with CNX2 if you use Nikon.
Barred Owl
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