A friend has a well developed Little Owl site and when he went away for a few days I was tasked with babysitting duties - not exactly a hardship!
This male made a late appearance just before dusk, so unfortunately the beautiful evening light which can be seen on the background was shaded from him, but hopefully in the coming weeks they might come in a little earlier. The site is baited.
Hi Mike, nice to be given the opportunity to 'babysit' as these guys are pretty cool in my book, killer BKG.
I think you should look to getting a bit more detail out of the brighter highlights to achieve more detail/clarity, it's looks a tad soft. I might also consider cropping a little off the RH side to provide a hard edge for the stone. If you had the opportunity, moving position more to the left to show the feet & kill would have been better I feel.
Hope you get more opportunities in the near future, but note, they could well be breeding, or even sitting on eggs so just be aware.
Nice shot Mike, if the mice are from the freezer the chances are they will be damp, I would try rolling them in the grasses and dust etc to make them a bit darker
Very dramatic and I am signing up for babysitting right now, I am crazy about owls and would love to have such an opportunity - well done in capturing this and what I like the most is the proud "I got it" pose from the main subject as well as the fallen mouse/prey. I do feel sorry for the mouse though:)
On a more serious note, I feel it would have been ideal to have the stone more in focus - I realise it wasn't quite possible, the lighting conditions forced you to choose a fairly high ISO and short DOF to obtain a reasonable SS - I guess you did not want to push things further to avoid noise? A tad more sharpening on the bird as well as stone is what I personally feel is needed, WDYT?
What an awesome sighting, thank you so much for sharing,
The white mouse issue is something I have to take on the chin as being a little unnautural, but I'd rather be open and honest about the bait.
Apart from that, the sharpness comments are interesting. I backed off on the USM as I thought it was a bit too crunchcy on my first take, and barely sharpened at all for this version. Maybe i should have given it a bit more
Mike I am ok with the sharpness of the bird it looks right to me,bird and BG look good ,your honest about the white mouse which is all that matters.
Cheers Keith.
Little owl with snack
, I am crazy about owls and would love to have such an opportunity - well done in capturing this and what I like the most is the proud "I got it" pose from the main subject as well as the fallen mouse/prey. I do feel sorry for the mouse though:)
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