Short-eared owl turning

[Desmond Chan]

D700 + 500 hand-held. ISO 1600 f4 1/160.

Cropped 40%.

Comments welcome and appreciated. Thank you for looking !

[John Chardine]

This is a beauty Desmond. I like the feeling that the bird is sweeping around to its left, where you have given more room in the composition. The bird is nice and sharp and I like the BG. For the wall I would try to that big OOF stalk that runs across the grass and exits centre right.

[Cody Covey]

very impressed how little noise there is for being 1600 ISO. Owl is nice and sharp. I am pretty new at photography but I think had this been mine I would've cropped off a bit of the right side. Either way great image!

[Stuart Hill]

Hi Desmond,

I like environmental images as it breaks up the close in portraits and shows where the bird lives. Could I ask why such a heavy crop?

kind regards.
Stu.

[Desmond Chan]

Could I ask why such a heavy crop?

Basically just to crop off the space at the top and on the left. Now that I think about it, from 12mp to 8mp...this one should be 33% cropped


Thank you for the comments, everyone !

[nancy hazen]

Great timing on this one.
Nancy

[Lance Peters]

Hi Desmond - Like this a lot - Big Congrats.
Dont think you could have done any better here.
Like the turning pose, the eye contact, the grass doesn't bother me too much.

[Desmond Chan]

Correction: the shutter speed should be 1/640s.

Sorry for the error