Barn Owl In Flight (Advice)

Evening everyone, Here's another image of the Barn Owl, this time in colour. As you can see the sky was very flat and drab. I've left this image alone apart from a little USM, and a slight crop off the LHS. I don't know what I can do with skys like this in Photoshop, as my skills in this area are lacking, so any advice would be very welcome indeed. I think the Barn Owl is reasonable?

No image date sorry, as I've lost it

I'm afraid I'm not much use on photoshop Paul so other than using the Shadow/highlight tool I cannot offer much advice. I will say that this image isn't as strong as your previous B/W post. Being able to see the eyes would be a plus but on this image the eyes appear a bit lifeless (unless it's just the small image size). Nicely caught pose and just enough movement in the wings to impart a sense of mosion.

Thanks Robert, I did think they looked a bit 'dead' myself. I've tried to inject some life in this re-post, but not too sure!?

Personally, I love the over all feel of the image as is Paul - I wouldn't do a thing. The light is sublime and the atmosphere generated is great. The shot looks studio-lit because of the strong directional light overhead. I might be out on my own with this one but I love it.

Cheers,
Chris

I also like the image very much and I quite like the light so don t think you need to do much to it to be honest

I agree with the above, I really like the images has a surreal feel to it as if it was taken inside under lights.

liam

i know im new to this but perhaps a little "fill light" in lightroom may help ,or possibly a cooling filter cs3 !! worth a try

Hi Paul. I don't see anything wrong with the sky either. The Owl probably could take a little bit of punch but I would take some of the expert's advice on that. I think I would have cropped off the RHS and not the left to give the Owl more room to fly into. Hope thats of some help.

Your image date can be found in the exif data contained within the original image its self, yours is.......
Camera Maker: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS 400D DIGITAL
Lens: 28.0-300.0 mm
Image Date: 2008-08-24 12:11:43 +0100
Focal Length: 81.0mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Exposure Time: 0.0013 s (1/800)
ISO equiv: 100
Exposure Bias: -0.67
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)
White Balance: Manual
Flash Fired: No (Manual)
Color Space: sRGB
Photographer: unknown

In dpp you can go file/info and it will be displayed. the new firefox 3.6 includes an exif viewer, right click on a picture and select exif, if its there it will be displayed.

I like the picture by the way

Having had a quick play, I don't think there is much you can do with the image due to the dynamic range limitations. The subject is a pale/white owl in sunlight taken against dark rain clouds. You have underexposed slightly to try and preserve the whites, but they are still blown. If you try and lighten the sky and wing shadow to force out some more detail by upping the gamma or boosting the mid curves or the shadow/highlight tool it exagerates the blown whites.

The file at present has no leeway - do you have it in RAW or JPEG only? if you have a RAW data file you could try HDR processing by processing at -1.5ev to cut down the highlight burn and 0ev to add detail to the clouds without over lightening them