White on White

[Brandon Holden]

1DM2n, 600mm... 87% of Frame.. baited

I missed out on the Snowy Owl fun the last few winters, but this winter I've seen oodles of them! Part of my winter work has been raptor surveys, so I'm seeing these birds while working and when im out shooting. These nearly white adult males are always very exciting to see, but are usually very difficult to photograph.

While shooting these birds with just the 600, i've found that im getting some strong vignetting against the white snow. I find it can look good when the bird is framed well, but causes nightmares when trying to add canvas to other shots.

Happy Shooting!

Brandon

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I've been playing around with it a bit, and came up with this one, and thought I'd post...

[Axel Hildebrandt]

This looks very cool, I like the pose and mood. Maybe a tad more space at the right. I'm undecided whether that blade of grass adds to the image or if I would clone it out. The center of the image looks a bit greenish, which I find surprising.

[Juan Aragonés]

I find this image really interesting and I have been playing with it in PS for a few minutes. I like your idea a lot and I have seen several interesting images that you have been poosting here and in other forums. Very risky but creative attempts of made something different. Way to go!
The vigenetting is really intense in the image and the green area in the center of the image cited by Axel is not very nice.
Here is an alternative version: I duplicated the layer and in the top layer I desaturated blues, cyans and greens but I did not touch the yellows or reds to preserve the beautifull eyes. When you desaturate those colors you will find that you get more details in the owl´s face. A rule of thumb: "Saturation kills details and desaturation rescue them".
Then I used the brush tool in erase mode to delete the eyes in the top layer. This way the original eyes, in the low layer, are showed. Then I merged the two layers and duplicate once again. On the new top layer I adjusted the levels to obtain an, almost, white image. Then I used the brush tool in erase mode (size 723, opacity 44%) to delete the central area of the image and to reveal the low layer. This way you can fix the vignette effect in the corners. I tried to use the lens correction tool in PS but the result doesn´t works.

I would like to hear what do you think about the result and hop it helps.:)

Juan

[Keith Bauer]

This is a very unique image. Congrats on it. I do see a bit of the green. The repost I believe is an improvement.

[Arthur Morris]

A wonderful ethereal image. Juan's repost is superb but I would not mind seeing a similar version a bit bluer. Removing the green was much needed. I would vote for losing the grass.

[Brandon Holden]

I find this image really interesting and I have been playing with it in PS for a few minutes. I like your idea a lot and I have seen several interesting images that you have been poosting here and in other forums. Very risky but creative attempts of made something different. Way to go!
The vigenetting is really intense in the image and the green area in the center of the image cited by Axel is not very nice.
Here is an alternative version: I duplicated the layer and in the top layer I desaturated blues, cyans and greens but I did not touch the yellows or reds to preserve the beautifull eyes. When you desaturate those colors you will find that you get more details in the owl´s face. A rule of thumb: "Saturation kills details and desaturation rescue them".
Then I used the brush tool in erase mode to delete the eyes in the top layer. This way the original eyes, in the low layer, are showed. Then I merged the two layers and duplicate once again. On the new top layer I adjusted the levels to obtain an, almost, white image. Then I used the brush tool in erase mode (size 723, opacity 44%) to delete the central area of the image and to reveal the low layer. This way you can fix the vignette effect in the corners. I tried to use the lens correction tool in PS but the result doesn´t works.

I would like to hear what do you think about the result and hop it helps.:)

Juan

This looks very cool, I like the pose and mood. Maybe a tad more space at the right. I'm undecided whether that blade of grass adds to the image or if I would clone it out. The center of the image looks a bit greenish, which I find surprising.

Hey Guys! Thanks for the comments! I was playing around with it a bit myself, and tried to reduce the brighter/greeny centre. Im really seeing a bad Vignetting when using just my 600mm, against these flat white surfaces (either clean snow, or gray sky), and I think thats what's causing the brighter greeny centre.

I do like the repost Juan, but I think its just a bit too grayish (for such a stark white bird), the light was so flat, that I had a hard time seeing the bird in the viewfinder (and the camera had a hard time finding it to autofocus as well). So I dont mind the bird blending into the background - and losing some detail in the process.

But overall I like what you did! Espicially when fixing the vignetting.. and I will have to give it a try!

Thanks again for the comments! This is makes these forums a great place to learn!

Brandon

[Juan Aragonés]

Hi Brandon, I am glad to hear that you have found helpfull the information. I agree with you that the blending of the snowy with the snow of the habitat is one of the strongest points in this fantastic image.

Unfortunately, I have never seen one of these beautiful owls in their natural habitat and snow is a very rare event where I live so it is hard for me to imagine how this image should look in real life (I am sure that my repost is more grayish that it should be :o).

Do not forget that you can have a lot of control over colour saturation process and that you can apply desaturation in the amount of your choice. 100% is a complete desaturation but you can use a lesser amount and try different degrees of desaturation for the greens and cyans (Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation) and look for the result that works better for you. If you do not desaturate the blues you will keep the nice bluish colour in the snow. I think that just a simple desaturation of the cyans and greens, to fix the greenish area in the center of the frame, and vignette correction would produce a good result.

I would like to point out that this is a very original image and I am surprised of the scarce feedback that is receiving. Lots of snowy owl images are being posted in the web at this time of the year, most of them with an awesome quality, sharpness, light, close portrait, habitat like images, etc and I really enjoy when I see those images but this one is very different, a good and refreshing attempt to made something different, and this one have a very artistic quality.

Keep on the good work and... keep them coming ;)