Little Owl (HDR)

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russellsnr

russellsnr

Well-known member
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Little Owl in UK. Just trying something here.
Sent 3 of the same image to Photomatix HDR, changed 2 of the images to +1 and -1 and merged, back to lightroom to adjust.
Thank You,
Russ.
Little Owl HDR Trial.jpg
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Amazing shot, everything is picture perfect, except for perhaps two tiny things. 1: maybe a slightly looser crop, and not as square? Not sure but it feels a tad too tight to me. 2: feels a bit overexposed to me but maybe it’s just my screen

Overall, well done shot of an awesome bird!!
 
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Wow, this is awesome. Perfect eye-contact, wonderful light and background.
And the owl is just cute.

And great sharpness, it seems the 180-600 delivers.

Did you use a hide?
 
As far as critique goes, one thing that catches my eye is the blurry foreground "frame." I know some espouse that as a frame within the frame, but in this case it catches my eye and pulls me away from the subject. Since the bird is vertical the crop could be switched to a portrait framing, removing part of the blurry rocks. Since the background is uniform the few remaining blurry rocks could be cloned or patched away. It might crowd the eyes a bit, so including or adding back more background left side of frame might he good. Could be a nice wall hanger.
 
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First and foremost, lovely image!

Regarding the processing, I do a fair amount of architectural photography - mainly interiors. I frequently photograph dark interiors with bright light coming through the windows and bright lighting in concentrated portions of the space. I used to always bracket my exposure settings.......-2, 0, +2.

However, I have found that is no longer necessary. The dynamic range of current sensors is amazing! One to 2 stops of adjustments are simply not a big deal - Assuming a well exposed image where the shadows do no need to be lifted very much and no Whites are blown! I find that I can frequently adjust a single raw image to get the image where I want it.

So I think you could get the same - and maybe better results - using a single well-exposed raw image.

In regards to this image, it does seem a bit bright on my calibrated monitor. And the brightness of the OOF foreground causes the eye to go to that area. (The eye will always go to the brightest part of the image.)

Perhaps try darkening the OOF foreground and background. Regarding the white/bright feathers of the owl, see if you can recover fine feather details by lowering the exposure (assuming the whites are not blown).
 
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It obviously worked, because this looks fantastic.

(I saw a little owl in Spain this winter, but it was far away and my shot is nowhere close to this quality).
 
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