Burrowing Owl Landing

[Loi Nguyen]

Thanks to David Salem's commenting on my previous image, I went back to my file and worked on this image. The Burrowing Owl chick landed on a bare branch away from the nest, so i knew eventually it will fly back. But instead, it flew straight towards me to land on another branch. It was a big rush when an owl fly straight at you.

I had binned this image since the stick cut across a wing, but given Dave's feedback I worked on removing it. I used a combination of the Patch and Clone tools.

Also cloned out the shadow on one eye.

1DX2
400f4 DO II
1/4000
f8
ISO-2500
Hand held

Wild, no call or bait.

Thank you for your comments.

Loi

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Loi, I like the landing but this one has some major issues, you need to clean up the twigs especially the one in the FG touching the bird and the darker one-very distracting. The other issue here is the HA that is far from ideal, the owl isn't just looking your way and the eye isn't fully open...


since you have the other excellent image it seems a waste of time to work on this image, unless you want to practice on your PP skills.


keep up the good work

[Daniel Cadieux]

The main issues are the large branch touching the owl, and the darker one bottom left, but I like all the other branches and twigs. I personally like the incoming pose - must be nice to have a few files to choose from :-)

[David Salem]

Hey Loi,

I'm glad I encouraged you to try some more cloning. Your clone job looks great and I can't see were it is so good work there. You might want to continue with the branch touching the wing. You could remove it completely and remove the dark one too. I do agree with Arash about the other images being better but this is great practice for you.

Keep working it!

[Loi Nguyen]

Thank you guys. I'm in China for business, so will pick this up when I'm back next week.

Yes, agreed that the head angle is not so ideal here, but it is a decent frame and gives me a chance to practice. I was amazed that the cloning looks good enough that David didn't see where :)

Loi