Little Owl
by Ron McCombe
I took this photograph a couple of years ago. I was working and visiting a commercial vegetable grower, in one of the large green houses worker who I knew came to me and said there was an owl on the lettuces. so I grabbed the camera with the 100-400 zoom lens and went to see it
It just sat and looked at me, I thought I was being supper cool creeping up the owl with out disturbing it. But it turns out it wasn't very well and finished up at the vets. But I got a series of pictures and this close cropped on is the one I like best.
Its a little soft on the right eye, and there's a little bit of green on the left.
I'd like to know what people think of the close crop
100-400 lens (400mm), 1/50se, f5.6, ISO 400
Comments
5 commentsI don't mind the intimacy of this portrait, it does focus attention on the owl's great eyes.
I may have taken this with more dof though, but even at ISO 400 your shutter speed was pretty slow, so that may not have been possible. For shots with this kind of light I've pushed my ISO to as high as 1000 and been satisfied with the results. Not sure which Canon you are shooting with though and if you could push the ISO that high.
The eyes sure draw me into the image.
To get a bit more DOF, I would have used manual mode with flash as main light (even the built-in would have sufficed) and stop down a few more stops. Despite what a lot of people say and condemn flash on nocturnal birds I have not ever found it to be a concern or detrimental to the birds' ability to behave naturally in my personal field experience. Although it's not something I would use recklessly either. But if an opportunity presents itself I would take it.
Congrats!
Personally, I wouldn't have even considered flashing this owl.