Happy Mothers Day: Great Horned Owl and Baby

[Roger Clark]

A baby owl snuggles up to its mother shortly after sunrise in Colorado.


Technical. Canon 1D Mark IV, 500 mm f/4 L IS lens + 1.4x teleconverter: ISO 400 at 700 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 second, manual exposure. Full height image, crop from sides to 16x21 proportion.

I normally like the eyes open, but I like this one. What do you think?

Roger

[dankearl]

I would have removed the extender to get a bit larger view.
I also like Owl eyes open.
It looks like a nice open view of them, hard to get.

[Randy Stout]

Roger:

I think it is really nice, peaceful, sweet. Sharp on the eyes, wish there was a bit more DOF, perhaps could have pushed up the ISO to give you more aperture flexibility.

Cheers

Randy

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Roger, a tender moment with mom and chick, and I like the leaning sleeping poses. The early morning light has brought out lovely warm colours on the owls, and agree, having the owls smaller in the frame may have worked better.

[Don Nelson]

Too tight in frame for my tastes.
No virtual feet on bottom and Mama's tail clipped.
Crop to "ideal proportions" wasn't ideal for me.

[Roger Clark]

All,
Thanks for the comments. Making them smaller in the frame just adds a lot of sticks, both in the nest below, but also tree branches on both sides and above. I find the OOF branches at left and upper left distracting. Interesting comment, Don, on cutting off the tail of the mom. I do have a little more of the tail, but that would mean more image on the left, which means more distracting background to the left. Thus, I was considering cropping tighter, about to where the N is in my signature. Thoughts?

Roger

[Roger Clark]

I reprocessed the image along the lines I discussed above. What do you think?

Roger

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Roger, nice light, moment and details. I also think more room would be better....even with the sticks. if you want to go tighter, then I might go even more tight than the repost.

[David Kettings]

Hi Roger, I like the repost as I find I am not distracted in any way by the surrounds. My focus is completely on the birds. I think also a ladder might have assisted at the time of capture. :)

David Kettings

[Ron Bernstein]

I like the image very much. Everyone loves the eyes open, because it makes an easier connection between us and the subject that we all crave. This runs against type with eyes closed, but
wins by creating the sweet connection between the subjects, and through it the emotional connection with us. I like the crop. It's so hard to get nest shots that aren't "sticky" and I understand
your comment that if you give the subjects more space, you'll have unacceptable stickiness. I do agree with the desirability of increased DOF, but wonder how much more
you would have obtained at iso 800, and wonder what the performance of that camera is at that iso. With Canon's latest technology, it was probably worth the try. Congrats!