Late afternoon session with the "Burrowing Owl"

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Ductape

Ductape

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I went out yesterday in search of burrowing owls and had success finding a few. I spent a few hours with them taking several photo's. First waiting for them to fly (they didn't), then waiting for the golden hour light. There were three in sight, but this one was closest to me. Image is cropped, but I also felt I could not get any closer without disrupting them (I scared one away when I first got there because I didn't see it). I was using my 600mm lens and during the event used the 1.4TCIII (and tried the TC 2.0III just because). I picked this shot to present because I felt it was clear, I like the bracketing between the rocks on either side, and it was about as late in the afternoon I have, before the shadow started crawling up the owls side. There was not much I could do to get away from the two pieces of grass coming up from below, and felt my best option was to bracket the owl between them also. As always, curious about your thoughts and what I should do different. Thick skinned, and trying to get better. You guys always give constructive advice and I do appreciate your input.

Nikon Z7II, Nikon 600mm F4 g, 1.4TCIII, on tripod.
840mm, 1/1000, f5.6, ISO 450.

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Ohh the owls is the striped stone!?!
I like this picture, sharp, clear identification of the subject even though everything seems to be brown (good thing when your an owl trying to hide from prying eyes). I can understand why you are annoyed by the grass but then it kind of frames the bird. Know why you stayed at distance, I have several shoots of tails and buts because I got too close.
And hats of for Nikon, fully open lens and cropped image but still pretty sharp with ISO 450
 
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Thanks for the feedback. The rocks where there from the farmers pulling them up out of the field over the decades and throwing them in the corner where the center pivot irrigation didn't water. Made for that unique dirty brown background the owl blended in with. There was another owl a bit further away that had the corn field creating a much different background:
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Love those little guys. IMO the second image is the better of the two. In the first one the rocks compete with the bird and the eyes aren't visible. The second image has a more complimentary BG and the eyes keep the attention focused and away from the FG. Both are far superior to the zero images that I have of the species. Well done.
 
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Ductape said:
As always, curious about your thoughts and what I should do different.
Click to expand...
I like them both, different but both great shots of interesting owls.

On the first one I might have set up with the bird further right in the frame giving his sight line more room as the owl is looking sharply to the left of the frame. You might try a crop to see what that positioning looks like if you haven't cropped too much to get the image posted.

But really, both are very nice and in different ways which is nice in terms of variety for the same subjects in your portfolio. Really nice work!
 
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