Concentration

[Steve Large]

On an old fence post, a short-eared owl eyes up the remains of a duck left by hunters at the rivers edge.

Canon 50D
500mm and 1.4X
F/8 at 1/250 sec
Exp +1

Thanks for your comments,

Steve

[Art Kornienko]

Appropriate title, would have been nice to see both eyes straight on, but still nice, love the bg and colours, I might have cropped in a touch on the left. Great shot.

[Rene Quenneville]

This is beautiful. I like the pose. Unusual but powerful to convey the emotion of the moment. You could incresase the attention on the bird by burning the fence post by about 1/3 stop (in Photoshop of course).

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the pose and BG. Another vote for a vertical crop and toning down the highlights on the perch.

[Steve Large]

Thank you all for your compliments and suggestions. I suppose a natural perch would have been better but I couldn't resist getting a few shots of this owl while he was letting me get so close. Usually they don't let me get with in about 150 feet before flying off. I will try a repost later when time permits and try the vertical crop and also endeavour to tone down the post a bit.

Steve

[Tony Whitehead]

Nice pose and concentrated stare. BG colour complements the owls colours perfectly. Plumage looks very smooth. Did you run NR on this? - if so I would probably mask it from the plumage to try and keep some of the feather texture.

[Ted Willcox]

Great pose, nice bg. You could select the bright part of the post, feather the selection and darken it in levels. well done.
Ted