The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
One of my bucket list critters has been a Northern Pygmy Owl. I went out the other morning north of Bozeman, MT, to take some portraits of my son and his wife. We arrived at our pre-planned location and there was my bird watching us pull up! Our photoshoot was delayed a few minutes while I filled the bucket with a few shots!
Specific Feedback
I don’t own a really long or fast lens. This was shot with a 70-300 @300mm. Its cropped down to about 20% of the original. It’s not super sharp, and I used Topaz Sharpen to get it to this point. How does it come across? When shooting such a small subject at less than optimal focal lengths, I tend to look for the final composition within the scene and make sure I get that portion in the image.
Paul - this really is exceptional! Tack-sharp owl, perfect pose and eyes, and great habitat.
I think you could lose a bit off the bottom, as there is not much going on there, and this would focus more on the owl.
Love this!
Wow!! Wonderful! The creature is amazing, the sharpening looks well-controlled and the environment is wonderful!! The enlarged version looks like you could zoom in even more if you wish.
What a great image of the owl, Paul. It’s a sharp as it needs be . All the markings seem very tight and crisp. The nicely focused bone gray branch and twig growth can carry the image as to the lightly wooded environment of the owl. The straight on stare and at the camera and facial markings are so very strong and hypnotic that I think it should be presented with more dominance in the image. To that end , you might consider cropping the bottom third and little off the top, and use a landscape format.
What a joy to view and such an awesome find as if it was waiting for you as you pulled up to your parking spot. Awfully nice of the subject to hang out for the moments until the 70-300 was ready. Did you shoot from the car or were you able to exit the vehicle for the shots?
Beautiful. Sharp enough and, far more important for me, a great setting.
I like the tall OOF tree in the BG, behind the owl. Cropping part of the bottom would weaken the line of that tree. So no need for a crop in my opinion. I like the composition as presented.
I started out from the car but it did let me wander slowly in its general direction. I keep that lens on the camera while driving for reasons exactly like this one. Many of my best wildlife images were taken from the drivers seat!
@SandyR-B@Diane_Miller@Stephen_Stanton@Han_Schutten@Allen_Sparks Thanks for the kind words all of you. For several reasons I like the crop as is. It certainly would show off the owl itself better to crop in on it, but when looking at the full res version, I just don’t feel right about loosing any more sharpness. Perhaps more importantly than that to me is the artistic value of an image. As several have said, I really like the lines of the branches. I did crop in a bit more on an early edit of this, but ended up moving out a bit to include the tip of the branch it’s sitting on. I like to see to include an animal’s environment in the image, but perhaps thats just because I don’t own anything longer than 300mm! Lastly, and probably least important, with such a small subject, I find a vertical presentation presents better on social media, which (for better or worse!) is where the majority of my work is viewed.
This is gorgeous, Paul. I’m incredibly jealous as the only one of these I’ve ever seen was back when I was shooting film and while I forget what lens I had on, it was a dot in the frame. My personal taste for small birds is to keep them fairly small in the frame (though you couldn’t tell that from some of my posts), so this suits my taste very well. I hope you have enough pixels to make a decent size print because this does deserve some wall space.
What a great image of the owl. The detail looks very good and the owl stands out well from what I would consider a complementary background. I like the overall composition and the environmental feel to the image. Congrats on filling your bucket.
Congrats on the EP. With small birds, getting close to them with shorter focal length lenses is not the best situation for the subject. This shot reveals habitat frequented by this bird and the overall darkness of the frame suggests solitude. The diagonal branch frames the owl and you were able to get a very rewarding shot for your effort…Jim
