High Key Hawk Owl

[Wayne Wood]

I got this guy going from perch to perch today on a very gray overcast day, Canon 20D w/ 200 F/2.8L, 1/2500 sec @ F/4.0, ISO 400, +1 1/3 exp comp, manual exposure

[Milo Burcham]

Cool action shot. Not the classic "pose" but the concentration inthe owls eyes adds to the action

[Joe Senzatimore]

Beautiful flight shot. The high key look works well here. The eye contact puts it over the top.

[David Hemmings]

Pretty cool shot Wayne, unique flight pose. I would be tempted to add some light and a little black in levels:)

[Wayne Wood]

Pretty cool shot Wayne, unique flight pose. I would be tempted to add some light and a little black in levels:)

I did that David but was afraid of overdoing it

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hey Wayne, I agree with David. Although you already did some this image can be pushed even further for some neede "punch". With the image already being "high key" a pure white BG would not be an issue if you decide to brighten the image more. I gotta go back there soon...it was perched way too high in a tree when I was there...

[john crookes]

Hi Wayne I like the p[ose kinda of looks like a dive bomber going in for the kill.

I noticed a cast on my monitor and also agree to the above I would also add a stroke edge to high key to help offset them on the page

maybe like this

of course i also forgot to add a stroke edge

glad 2008 is almost gone

[Wayne Wood]

Thanks for the comments everyone and thanks for your efforts John , I think you have too much Magenta in there though, I reworked it and this is what I came up with

[Daniel Cadieux]

OK, since we are in repost mode I thought I'd give you the version I had in mind. I used the original post as a starting point: First, in levels, I set the white point on the BG. This brightened the image somewhat but more importantly gave it a perfect WB. Then I gave a hefty dose of S/H on the owl (you could have gone +2 EC in-camera as the colour noise is starting to rear its head in PS with such heavy S/H). Lastly, using the sponge tool set at saturate and 8% opacity, I gave two passes on the iris to give a more pleasing yellow.

P.S. I added a black border to outline the high-key image against the forum colours...

[Wayne Wood]

I like this version thanks my little moderator buddy ;-)