Great Horned owl

And a portrait on the same perch taken from the porch and left a bit darker to evoke the twilight feel.

A couple of nights ago, this owl showed itself in the late evening light (see the Avian forum) and then showed up on this swallow box after sunset. This box is within 20 feet of the front porch and it let me come off the porch onto the grass to get the sky background for this image. The background bird is one of many swallows that were pretty upset by its choice of a perch.

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Technical Details

Sony A1, FE 200-600 + 1.4 TC @ 283 mm, f/9, 1/320, iso 6400, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Horizontal original cropped to a 4153x5160 vertical. Taken June 30th at 9:12 PM.

3 Likes

Both are wonderful! Put this guy on retainer!! Both are so nicely detailed. I’m curious about a slightly higher exposure on the second, although the evening feel certainly fits.

@Diane_Miller I haven’t tried a higher exposure on that frame because I had images already with brighter renditions. I may play with it some more. We haven’t seen the bird in a couple of days, but I took a ton of images in the two opportunities I had, so I have a lot to play with.

You’re so lucky to have an owl at your house. I like both images but agree with Diane that the brightness of the second image can be brought up a bit. There’s also a tad of a blue cast on the white plumage just below the face in the larger image. The pose and the eye contact on the second image is just superb.

Fantastic image. I especially like the first with the flying bird in the background, it gives it depth to the image. Perhaps a slight vignetting to focus the center of the image might help?