Nature Photographers Network
This is the preserved archive of the original Nature Photographers Network. The community continues at naturephotographers.network.
Forums · MWNP

Great Horned Owl Close-Up

Discussion

10 replies
Posted by Michael Kuran on May 6, 2009 at 7:29 AM
Great Horned Owl Close-Up
I've got a red tail hawk to add so I'm gonna try to add the second picture. Thanks for looking,

Mike K
Posted by Michael Kuran on May 6, 2009 at 7:30 AM
Here is the shot of the Red Tail Hawk.
Posted by Kendall Hetrick on May 6, 2009 at 8:06 AM
Both great shots. Good eyes and detail.
Posted by Anthony Gibson on May 6, 2009 at 9:47 AM
Both are nice images, but the winner for me is the Hawk. Did you take any wider shots? It would be nice to see them in the environment as well to give them a little perspective. Great Captures! :toast:
Posted by Brian Vance on May 6, 2009 at 2:08 PM
I like the hawk shot a lot. Nice perch, good look at the red tail and the sideways head turn has good eye contact. The owl shot has nice eyes, but seems a bit too tight.
Posted by Bruce Palla on May 6, 2009 at 4:07 PM
My winner would be the hawk also. What were the techs? How close were you? Nice shots, I'm jealous.
Posted by Mitch Erwin on May 7, 2009 at 4:06 PM
Mike, I've been out for a bit with shows and filling print orders so I'll chime in on this real quick.

Both images or fine. The owl - eyes are sharp and nice, the branch / trunk on the right is way to distracting.

The hawk needs more alot more room on the left and just a bit more on the right. When the subject is looking or heading a certain direction you usually want to have more room in the frame in that direction, but there are times when that isn't the case too! :toast:
Posted by Michael Kuran on May 8, 2009 at 10:32 PM
I agree Mitch! I zoomed in to much and it was darn near full frame so I'm learning to take some closeups and some that are zoomed out for just that perspective!!!

Mike K
Posted by Kerry Leibowitz on May 12, 2009 at 1:06 AM
I'm no bird photography expert (there's the understatement of the month), but both shots seem quite striking to me. While I agree that the BG for the owl shot is a bit of a distraction, I still appreciate all of the evident details. Nice work.
Posted by Michael Kuran on May 12, 2009 at 9:24 PM
Thanks Terry! As far as the back ground what else could I have done? Maybe use a third party plugin and blur the background some dunno :) Anyway thanks for looking.

Mike
Posted by Kerry Leibowitz on May 14, 2009 at 11:41 PM
Not much you could have done re the BG, Mike...other than pick another shooting angle I suppose, which probably wasn't viable. You could try carefully selecting the owl, invert the selection and use a Gaussian blur on the background along with some delicate masking and feathering, but that would be a very tricky, time-consuming exercise