Ggo

[Bobobird]

Old shot from winter of 2014. Have so many of them taken over an extended period and only recently had a bit of time to go over them.

Here is one. Hope you like it.

C&C most welcome as always.

[Shadowman]

Nice, owl looks electric as it emerges from the shadows.

[terrib]

I very much like it. Looks like he's flying out of flames. Great eyes. I love the contrast of bird to background.

[IzzieK]

What can I say? This is really beautiful Bobo...I took a shot of a speckled out two weeks ago and as soon as s/he sees my camera s/he turned his/her head the other way...so I just said to my husband, bugger it! s/he does not like me...

[Krawuntzel]

A great shot, sharp to the tip of wings, very hellish background, which makes the owls feathers stand out.
Erwin

[gregj1763]

Stunning image Bobo, glad I'm not on the receiving end of that stare

[bnnrcn]

Very nice image as always Bobo Did you change the color of the BG with PP or is it the real color? Not a usually seen BG.

[Bobobird]

Thanks John, Terri, Izzie, Erwin, Greg, Binnur.

I never remove or replace a background but sometimes I might mutilate it so that the subject stands out better than using the as-shot background.

The shot was taken late in the day, clear, and the sun was setting. In winters the light can be pretty intense on such a clear day. It was -25c or lower and snow was more than knee deep. He was in a tree about 200m away so kept an eye on him hoping he would take off. He eventually did so very lucky he came towards me rather than sideways. He was semi-flying hovering looking for food and when he came within range took a series of shots and this is one of those. The background are the woods in which he was standing. Huge blobs of snow covering the branches and smaller ugly blobs all over. The image would have been discarded if he was even a tad soft.

In normal processing the shot never looked good. But would return to the series now and then. This time, I isolated the owl into its own layer and made him look good in that. The background was something else. Finally I put it back in raw with only the background and pulled the saturation slider all the way and LO there were lots of orange in there from the setting sun. So went with that, and back in PS darkened the sides so that the trees would look like flames. Helped cover up the blobs of snow. Gave that a couple of surface blurs and this is the result.

Would never have deleted the shot, it is so rare to get this owl in our parts and so sharp at that so it was just fix after fix after fix until this one.

I quite like this shot of inspiration so finished it off to show here.

[Mike Buckley]

The image has such a haunting effect. Really conveys mood much more than the typical BIF shot.

[Bobobird]

Thanks Mike. Took over a year to make it look reasonable but yes, not a typical BIF, some would classify it in the "arty" category.