As the weather has been rather horrible here lately and it appears that all of all early winter raptors have settled to the south a bit, I'm going back and processing some images I've not done previously.
This particular image is similar to another but a bit slightly different.
This was created on a heavily overcast day early in the morning and after a newly fallen March snow the night before. It was difficult to balance the EV in order not to blow the snow (as it is the snow is hot and I had to tone it down) and still get enough light on the subject.
Nikon D2X handheld, 200-400 AFSVR, TC14EII, ISO 500, f 7.1, 1/200, CW metering, +.7 EV compensation
Wow, a gorgeous individual you got here! Nice comp, and wondeful winter setting. I detect a reddish cast...see if my repost is an improvement. I've set the white and black points in levels and this is what I came up with:
Excellent stuff Jim! Love the setting and the eye contact. Agree about the reddish cast, but I still see one with the repost by Daniel. Here's another repost that tries to banish the red cast entirely.
I actually did the same thing Daniel did; a Levels adjustment. I zoomed in to the pixel level and picked the whitest pixel I could find, and then I repeated the process with the blackest pixel.
This is really lovely, Jim. Reposts are the icing on the cake. Love the warm colours and soft textures of the owl. The OOF pine needles make a great BG. Needles, cones and snow on perch are great. Good job.
Jim,
Fantastic shot! I have been trying since mid November to get a shot of our local short ears like this. Just can't seem to get as close as last year. Very good sharpness and feather detail. Short ears are my favorite owl for sure. By the way, my vote is on Doug Brown's repost. Seems that his colors match what I recall as being a more natural tone for the bird.
There are easy two ways to negate an overall cast.
1- Ctrl J the background, go to Filter > Blur > AVERAGE. next invert the cast color Ctrl I, change the layer blend mode to Color and use the opacity slider to negate cast. Usually around 10% will work well.
2 - Use a Selective Color Adjustment layer picking the color of the cast (red in this case) use complimentary color slider to negate the cast (cyan in this case), with some colors you will need to use the same color slider to negate the color. The advantage is that you can negate a color without having to introduce another, as when using levels/curves. Moreover, you can lighten/darken individual colors with the black component of the color...it is best to change the layer blending mode to Luminosity for this adjustment.
Warmest Regards,
Chas
Last edited by Charles Glatzer; 12-27-2008 at 01:09 PM.