Any critique most welcome, you will see from my shutter speed and iso that it was a bit difficult and a real learning curve to try and make a decent image ,must say I am not sure about this, so any suggestions would be very welcome.
Wish I had a Barn Owl peeking through on my gate, but unlikely to happen!
Composition is obviously challenging, but in my view, you need to get rid of the metal hinge. Even just doing a crop with the browser helps enormously. Then, your choices are going to be determined by what else was in the original frame - but maybe just cropping some off the right side as well.
Love the peek-a-boo pose.
The crop needs to come up significantly from the bottom to at least the bottom of the 4th leaf (counting from top to bottom) on the right hand vine IMHO.
Your exposure is excellent based on the light you had.
This would have been a killer shot if he had been on a natural perch but still very nice as is.
Gail
Hi Keith, great view of the Owl peeking through the leaves, and it pops nicely against the darker BG. Comp wise, I would come up quite a lot as per my repost.
Keith, Congrats on photographing this wonderful species. I would be so totally thrilled and you did a great job of getting a decent exposure in a touch situation. I'm going to go in a bit of a different direction regarding composition.....not that the ones that you received aren't valid, but just as another alternative. First, clearly the bird isn't on a natural perch, and given that it's a garden gate with garden species of plants included, I would leave the hinge and even add more at the bottom if you have it. (Play up the gate, in other words) I would trim significantly from the right as the line of the ivy takes me right out of the frame. Where to crop, I'm not 100% sure, would have to play with it. Turning it into a true vertical gets rid of the squarish comp and puts the owl right in the upper third, a strong composition. I think that the entire image would pop more if brighter and try livening up the eyes by dodging the highlights. I'm being rather general here, would experiment with the processing if this was mine, and I do wish that it was. There is something really charming about this image and I like it much.
Thanks Gerald,Gail,Stuart,and Grace, certainly given me some excellent advices, must admit maybe worrying about IQ to much and neglecting the composition. Will do a repost if time permits.
This is a very cool species, and one I've never seen in the wild. I love the pose. I agree with Grace about the gate. I'd either crop to just above the hinge or give a little more room below it if you have it. On the tech side, I don't worry about loss of IQ on m D3S until ISO 6400. At that point, your exposure better be perfect and there won't be much ability to crop but IQ still hold up very well. The D4 is reportedly a stop or so better in the ISO dept., so you definitely have some room to work with.
Great species to have, Keith. I wanted to say to go for a tighter crop, then I saw Stuart's repost.
This is what I had in mind. Most of us would be happy to have a shot of this Owl like yours.
What an awesome backyard picture! Because it is a yard picture I am OK with the gate. As posted I'm not comfortable with the small amount of wood below the metal hinge, so for that reason either adding more at bottom, or cropping just enough to hide that metal part are both viable options. The hunched pose and "down the barrel" stare, combined with the beautiful framing created by the vines makes for a unique and enjoyable image.
Excellent image and you are blessed to have this opportunity.
This is a bird in an urban setting and you cannot hide that fact, nor in this case would I want to. I would be inclined to rotate the image so that the fence line is perfectly perpendicular which would mean a rotation of just a few degrees ACW.
Nice work Keith and Merry Christmas!
Barn Owl
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