Owlet Family

[Vinay Narayana Swamy]

This was captured at Kanha National Park, India last Jan. Although we were aware of the Owlets Nest in an old tree, the chance of seeing five owlets together was remote. We shot this on the first day of our trip when we got to see the five of them together. The sun had set and the light was bad, but we still asked the Jeep driver to stop and shot this at f5.6 and ISO 800 at 400mm. I was only able to get one shot at this before two of the owls flew away. There was no time to compose, change settings or do anything. we waited to capture for the next five days that I was there but they never came together. I have underexposed this picture by 1 full stop to get the shutter speed.

[Martha Weaver]

Under the circumstances, this is a very neat picture. They look so cute all huddled up together!

[John Chardine]

Hello Vinay- This is great! The orderliness of the line of owlets adds a strong element as does the sweep of the tree hole. I like the warm light. I'll suggest a few things to help with the image. First it would be great to see a bigger version. You can post images up to 1024 pixels wide or up to 800 pixels high so long as the file is no larger than 200kb. Even though you underexposed the image you can do a lot to recover the exposure in post-processing, especially if you made a RAW image to begin with. I played with the middle slider in Photoshop Levels and was able to bring up the tonality of the image nicely. Curves would also work. In Adobe Camera Raw, the exposure slider and fill light slider would also work well, and this would be the best time to a adjust the exposure. Finally, for a nice print for the wall, I would clone out the leaf top left, which is a bit distracting. This is a wonderful image though, with a lot of potential.

[Kerry Perkins]

Vinay, wonderful image and good suggestions made by John. This was a great moment in time captured and congratulations for getting the image. Quick thinking on your part to get all five like this. Would be sweet if we could see the eyes a little better, but I love the sleepy look!