Barred Owl Portrait

[Anthony Barsotti]

Here's one from a few weeks back, I've been wanting to get a nice tight portrait of one of these guys for a while and finally had a decent opportunity. Shot with my 1DX II and 600mm f/4 IS II and 2x Extender III, 1/200 f/8 ISO 3200. Processed in Topaz Denoise AI and Sharpen AI and some basic exposure and curves adjustments in ACR and Photoshop. Hope you like it, thanks for looking.

[Randy Stout]

Anthony:

Riveting eyes for sure. I find the OOF foliage a bit distracting, esp. the brighter are on the right frame edge. Perhaps tone down the brightness and saturation just a bit.

But talk about making eye contact. Wow.

Randy

[Juan Tolentino]

Great eye contact and excellent details specially for 1200mm. The OOF foliage under the eyes covering the rest of the face and most of the body is unfortunate. Agree with Randy on toning down or cloning some distractions. Thank you for sharing.


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[arash_hazeghi]

I love the eye contact but the OOF leaf really kills this one for me. it's a shame because the eye contact of details were excellent

TFS

[Randy Stout]

Anthony:

I tried a B&W version to help with some of the issues, and it really helped. Worth a try on your end.

Randy

[Anthony Barsotti]

Thanks everyone! Yeah the out of focus area on the body and beak were a pain, there was really no way around it in the field. I’ll keep trying though, fortunately I have a pretty decent success rate of finding this particular owl and he doesn’t seem
to mind people very much so maybe I’ll get an opportunity with less obstruction.

[John Mack]

Great stare on this one. You did very well with what you had to work with.