Comin' at ya...

[Jeff Dyck]

I had a great experience about a month back in the tall-grass prarie fields at Oak Hammock Marsh (just north of Winnipeg, Manitoba) when, just before sunset, I was greeted by a trio of Short-eared owls (young siblings?). These three seemed to be hunting together and were just very curious about me - I was simply standing out in the open and at one point all three of the cheeky birds were circling around me less than 20 feet over my head, seemingly just checking me out. I had several passes that were so close that the owls completely overwhelmed the viewfinder (I have one image where the EXIF data says focus at 4.2m). Tough shooting conditions though - the diffused low angle light (just before sunset) and fast moving birds had the autofocus continuosly losing it's tracking.

I have no idea what to do with the composition here - I simply cropped so that the wing tips pointed at the corners. Thoughts?

Canon 5DmarkII -- 400L / f5.6 -- ISO640 -- f6.3 @ 1/1250s

[Paul Randall]

Perfect lighting for this scene and subject Jeff. What you described sounds like a bird photographers dream (apart from the losing AF tracking bit:o)
A hard one to crop I think (those wings are so long) but I would just try a little tighter and slightly off centre to the left. Others may disagree.

[Morkel Erasmus]

wow - I like your original post very much, and would only 2 do things to try and improve...

1. the owl seems a tad soft, probably due to resizing...I would selectively sharpen the bird a bit more
2. there seems to be a blueish hue in the white feathers...desaturating the blue channel selectively would help here

:)

[Bhushan Dalvi]

Jeff, I like your composition and crop for this image. I will agree with Morkel. The owl needs a slight selective sharpening.

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Jeff, I went with a purposefully different crop than the first repost and sharpened the face with a Quick Mask--Smart Sharpen at 100% and .1. I do love the image. I cropped from the bottom to eliminate the light area and from our left as the bird is angling to our right. Cropping from our right as in Pane #2 cuts off the flight path for me.

[Arthur Morris]

Whew, those eyes look sharp now!