Wnet out to shoot some Long-eard Owls together with a friend and we where lucky as some of them where quite visible and in the sunlight. This is not always the case as the often stay within the shade of trees. This one gave me a nice stretch...
Greetings,
Jeroen Stel
Canon Eos 1D Mark3
Shutter speed: 1/320 sec
Aperture: F 13
Exposure mode: AV
Exposure compensation: -1/3
Flash:no
Flash exposure compensation: -
Metering mode: Evaluative
Drive mode: AI Focus
ISO: 640
Lens: Canon 600mm F4 + 2x TC
Focal length:1560 mm
AF mode: Auto Focus
On tripod
Levels/Curves/USM/Contrast/Saturation/Noise Ninja/Lab-Sharpening
Sorry Jeroen, this is not really working for me. I like the fact that this beautiful owl is in the open and the exposure looks good, but there is no eye contact and the wingstretch is clipped at the bottom. I bet you have some with better eyecontact though, would love to see some of those.
Thank you for your comment on my photograph. Allthough in most cases i would agree with you that eye-contact is the best thing in avian photography i do not feel the need for it in this shot. The owl is showing a small piece of it's eye and that combined with the wing stretch is enough to make this shot interesting in my opinion.
I do agree it would have been nicer to include the full length of the wing stretch but it happened in a flash and i had the 2x converter mounted wich made it impossible to include the whole scene.
I do have some shots with full eye-contact but with still poses and perhaps i will post one of these later on.
Hi Jeroen, I looked at this for a while over coffee and came to the conclusion that I really like the image. I don't think that eye contact is all important in this shot. A lot of images portray natural and interesting behavior quite well without always having eye contact. The wing stretch is cool, I got a Barred Owl doing that once. If I could nit anything it might be that a little more room in the top right might be nice, cool shot.
Dave:)