GHO Siblings

Well, I'm back to my owls.

This is two of the four young GHO's that Josiah and I followed around this summer. They never really grew comfortable with us, but I think that's probably good even if it makes it hard to get the angles and resulting shots a wildlife photographer hopes for!

I had seen the four of them flying along a small creek and they disappeared from view behind a hillside bend. I took a long, looping route and as I came up the slope toward the creek, I spotted these two in perched in a dead tree, and their siblings wandering around in the grass behind them. While I probably could have raised the tripod up a bit higher without spooking them, I actually liked the soft green "vignette" of the OOF foreground field along the bottom of the picture.

I know there are simply a LOT of branches all over the place here, and I was tempted to crop in a little tighter to eliminate some of the peripheral ones, but these are the types of trees our GHO's so often hunt from, so I decided I'd give you the full meal deal. I was a little disappointed the owl on our right in the frame didn't find a little bit more clear space to perch, but I'm afraid there wasn't much I could do except choose my angle, plant the tripod, compose and shoot!

I'll post one of my favourites of these owls as soon as I take another stab at processing it.

Thanks for looking, and thanks even more for any comments, critiques or suggestions you may offer. Larger version definitely shows more detail on these young owls' amazing plumage.

Nikon D600
Nikkor AF-S 500mm f/4 IF-ED
ISO 1250
1/400sec @ f/5
-0.3 EV
Tripod mounted with legs dropped down to use foreground grasses to vignette lower portion of image
Cropped to app. 85% of original
Minimal processing in Phase One Capture One Pro 7, PS5 and Nik