Unexpected

Gallery: AvianPosted November 20, 2015113 views9 comments

Hi Everyone! Thank you for your comments on the last picture I posted of this Great Grey Owl. My dad told you he posed for us on all kinds of perches, and he sure did! We weren't expecting him to fly to the fence post right beside us, though! The problem was when I turned my camera and lens to photograph him, the left half of the background was bright sky and the right half was super dark forest. I took the picture anyway and then my dad and I decided to crop it like this.

After we took a few pictures we slowly backed away to let him hunt and get pictures from a better distance, but he ended flying back to the trees and we got a few more before leaving.

I hope you like it!

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Nikon D7100
Nikkor AF-S 300mm f/4D IF-ED with Nikon TC-14EII teleconverter
ISO 1000
1/1600sec @ f/5.6
-0.7EV
Mounted on Gitzo tripod with Acratech GV2 ballhead
Cropped to about 60% of original

Comments

9 comments

Comment posted by Cay-Uwe Kulzer on November 21, 2015 at 4:06 AM

Josiah,

for me it works very well, especially your choice to go for black & white.

Registered on January 27, 2004, 494 Posts, 4021 Comments

Comment posted by Jim Zablotny on November 21, 2015 at 6:21 AM

Hey Josiah,

Nice details--I'm undecided about the composition. The rule of thirds works OK for the eyes, but I do not think that this type of image is really helped by the asymmetry from the crop. You may want to rotate the image slightly clockwise to get the eyes lined up with the horizon. That might do the trick for me regarding the composition. The black and white view is nice and you captured lots of detail. You also have some interesting contrast and shading around the eyes which adds quite a bit of depth to the comp........................Jim

Registered on January 17, 2004, 705 Posts, 3594 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on November 21, 2015 at 1:23 PM

That must have been a great experience, Josiah, and going ahead and shooting was definitely the right thing to do! I like this treatment. With the blown out bg the B&W works very well. I would be interested in what it would look like with those big yellow eyes left their natural color, but I really like this. I don't know what the full original looked like, but if you had the rest of the head, it might be interesting to see what it would look like with that replaced. You could always change the dark bg on the right to white to make it match the left side.

devil

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by Kurt Bowman on November 21, 2015 at 7:47 PM

Hi Josiah, I really like your processing decisions on this all the way around except for the crop. If mine, I might crop this square (or close to as a 4x5) and loose the negative space on the left. Fill the frame with his head. Those eyes are what draws in the viewer, so I think focusing the crop on them would pay off better. Just my 2 cents. Also, great job on the techs! crying

Registered on June 19, 2008, 1005 Posts, 8028 Comments

Comment posted by Hans Overduin on November 22, 2015 at 8:33 AM

Very nice, Josiah. I like the B&W style and the out-of-the box thinking about the cropping. Just my kind of thing sad

, Cheers, Hans

Registered on August 31, 2011, 491 Posts, 3807 Comments

Comment posted by Steve Thompson on November 23, 2015 at 10:52 AM

Well done Josiah. I like the B&W conversion and crop you and your dad chose but I would experiment with some others. If this is the one that works best...so be it. I always like seeing the work you guy's do with owls. It's just envy, I don't have any owl photos. wink

Nice work!

Registered on August 7, 2014, 125 Posts, 2319 Comments

Comment posted by Katie Jones on November 23, 2015 at 5:05 PM

Josiah,
Great image. I like the black and white processing and the framing. Very eyecatcing!

Registered on November 17, 2015, 17 Posts, 91 Comments

Comment posted by Ken Archer on November 23, 2015 at 5:56 PM

Sweet Close-up Josiah!

I like this very much like it as posted. Those eye are awesome!

Excellent Work laugh

Registered on October 28, 2004, 222 Posts, 6683 Comments

Comment posted by May Haga on November 24, 2015 at 2:03 PM

Cool capture Josiah. What a thrill it must have been to have him land so close to you. I like everything about this image, even the framing.
May

Registered on February 22, 2007, 714 Posts, 8470 Comments