Great Gray Owl

[Isaac Grant]

State bird number 420 for me in New York State and none sweeter than this Great Gray Owl. Worth every second of the 14 hour round trip from New York City. Currently there are 2 of them hanging out on the Canadian border. 14 degrees and a strong wind blowing right in my face from the north during a snow storm just made the reward all the sweeter. Photo taken from a raised road. We were very lucky when the bird flew right by us and landed at eye level. Really it was about 15 feet up at the top of a small tree but because of the elevated road it was situated perfectly.

Canon 1DX and Canon 500 f4ii with 1.4xiii. Tripod mounted. ISO 2500 (Could not dream of getting a shot like this with my 7d2), F6.3, SS 1/2000. Bird was actively hunting and looking around all over the place so I needed all the shutter speed.

Converted in DPP 4.5. In PS I cropped, cloned out a small twig at the bottom of the frame. Sharpened and applied NR with Neat Image.

[Joseph Przybyla]

That's a beauty, no nits from me. Beautiful owl, nicely shown. Thank you for sharing, Isaac.

[Alex Becker]

I have to agree with Joseph -- an absolute beauty. Great looking background, details, stare, and I'm the biggest sucker for OOF snow fall. Thanks for sharing this!

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Amazing shot. I Love stare and clean back ground.

We also have a Great Gay Owl in Utah after 20 odd years. I saw the magnificent bird last weekend. I did not get any opportunity to take a decent image.

Congratulations.

[arash_hazeghi]

Excellent quality and colors, perfect HA and BG. I have a couple like this one too, it's a classic! With DPP4 and 1DX you can easily crank up the ISO to 6400 if need be. enjoy your new camera

[David Salem]

I can only pray that when I do finally get myself in front of a Great gray owl, I can capture a photo as nice as this!! Worth the drive is right!!

[annmpacheco]

Congrats Isaac, this is a real beauty, enjoy your new rig as well!

[Joe Subolefsky]

Issac lovely frame the BG, falling snow eye contact it's got it all!

I was up at my daughter in Troy NY this past weekend and seen a pair short eared owls hunting just off of 87 below Albany. Looks like that 1DX is working well have not got out with mine yet.

[Isaac Grant]

There are a bunch of Short ears in Orange County. Have loads of people lined up every day shooting them but I have never gone for them. All of the shots I have seen are fairly low quality as the birds are not so close so I just have passed on going. I would love to find some that are closer. I love this camera in every way. Really am glad that I took the plunge. Can't imagine going back to the 7d2 now as the image quality is just better, the low ISO performance way better, can crop much more and can lift the shadows with ease. Plus the frame rate and focusing is far superior. I have many flight shots of this owl where the 1dx easily held focus against the trees it was in front of. Eager to hear what you think of it.

[Bill Dix]

Congratulations, Isaac. A beauty of a frame, and worth the trip (easy for me to say). Great frontal view, and the snow is a bonus. Definitely a bird on my bucket list, and I guess I'll never get him by sitting in New Jersey.

[Glenn Conlan]

Super image Issac, on my bucket list. You have a winner here, good work in difficult conditions, you should be very proud of yourself wish it were mine!

[Isaac Grant]

Thanks everyone. The kind comments from so many of you that I really admire means a great deal to me. Very much appreciated.

[Ryan von Linden]

Nice shot Isaac. Was this on Sunday? If so we were there at the same time. If that's the case though you must have snapped this just as it started snowing, because the snow got super heavy super fast.

[Isaac Grant]

Thanks. I was there on Saturday. It was snowing the whole time. Left Saturday as I did not want to be stuck driving back to New York City in a storm. No way I wanted to turn a 7 hour trip into double that!

[Ryan von Linden]

Ok, I didn't realize there had been any snow on Saturday. I wouldn't have wanted to drive all the way to the city on Sunday either. I'm in the Albany area and it took 6 hours to get home, normally it's 4. I'm actually heading down to the city this weekend, but hoping to go back up to Massena the weekend after that if the owls are still hanging around.