1DMkIV, 500mm, ISO 500, f/5.6, 1/2500s, manual exposure, handheld.
Removed some tall grass at the bottom foreground, added canvas to the left. Selective sharpening and NR, added saturation and sharpening to the eye.
C&C welcome. Thanks!
Tin Man
1DMkIV, 500mm, ISO 500, f/5.6, 1/2500s, manual exposure, handheld.
Removed some tall grass at the bottom foreground, added canvas to the left. Selective sharpening and NR, added saturation and sharpening to the eye.
C&C welcome. Thanks!
Tin Man
Loved that eye pose and BG... nicely done..
Very cool action image and compostion Tin Man! Like the blur and eye sharp. Well done!
Awesome flight pose and great sharp eye. Lovely blurred bg. I wonder if taking a little off the right would make sense.
Nice pose captured with the blurred wings adding to the action. Good eye contact and nice BG.
awesome pose - those eyes!! great light too, you can feel chuffed with this
What a shot...loved that sharp face. wonderful job of focussing. Terrific pose and BG.
You should delete the first one. This one is immensely superb. Amazing pose and sharpness plus it has the "wow!" factor: tremendous impact.
How are you getting these birds to fly????
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Like the little bit of blur in the wings and the sharp face!

excellent dynamic pose and a great BG, the details in this one don't look quite as sharp as the other but the pose and BG makes up for it.
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To answer Artie and Allen's questions, I found out thru that one day and a half at Salton Sea that all these burrowing owls have very different characters.
First, you are right, very few of them fly. When you just walked out from your car from 200 feet away and try to get just a tiny bit closer, their little heads popping out from the burrow would disappear and they were inside instantly. And you wait and wait and they never came out.
And then there were some that were very friendly. I got closer and they got curious and actually walked towards me and wanted to check me out. And when they got tired they walked back into the burrow.
But a very very very small population of them (usually a male and a female in one burrow) were super skittish, but in a different way. The male (I assume its the male) would fly away as a decoy to several blocks away, while the female quickly went back inside the burrow.
One time I was walking along the side of the road trying to photograph the ibis, and didn't even notice a burrow, and one of them would suddenly fly out from nowhere about 15 feet away from me and circle around me once or twice, in good lighting, and I missed all 20 shots.
It's just my little observation, probably not correct as this is the very first time in my life I saw a burrowing owl.
Hi Arash, you are right on about the details and sharpness. I think I have to use at least 1/3200s next time. Well maybe I just missed the focus. I am still trying to understand why its not as sharp as my first post of the top side owl.

I think it's the focus that is slightly off, this one is really tough for the AF, the camera has a harder time when the bird is incoming as opposed to flying side ways or banking. You did well with the techs, sometimes it will just not grab AF so don't be dissapointed :)
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Fantastic pose and BG...Love the eye
Good flying posture, and I like the colour of your BG too. The eye really stand out nicely. Well captured.
Tin Man, Thanks for the info. I have never seen that behavior in Florida.
BTW, the face and eye on this image look razor sharp to me and that is all that I care about.... :)
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
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Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
E-mail me at samandmayasgrandpa@att.net.
Thanks so much for all your encouragements and critiques. I found it so much fun to join BPN and talk to you guys.
Artie, that's interesting isn't it. I actually sat for 2 hours at the library earlier today trying to research about burrowing owl behavior in order to understand it! It's addictive.