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Powerful Owl

Powerful Owl (Image ID 47882)
Photographed byGraham Cam on Fri 27th Aug, 2021 and uploaded on Sun 5th Sep, 2021 .
Resolution1800x1440
Viewed430
ID47882
CommentMy birding and photography compatriot, Steve Tredinnick, recently called to say that he had located a powerful owl whilst performing his duties as one of our essential Covid workers. The owl was on an infrequently visited track in the Blue Mountains and fortunately within the 5km radius I am entitled to travel as part of the Greater Sydney lockdown.

This is one of many images I captured and whilst it is worthy of submitting for publication, it is not perfect. Let me discuss the positives and the negatives in this image and the workflow I applied in its processing. Whilst I include the Lightroom metrics, I do so simply so that those new to LR can get a feel for the range of edits I applied to this image.

The image was captured in midday light, which was also backlighting the owl. Hence, the owl was dark against a bright sky and with dappled light highlighting both the branches and leaves. It was not an easy photo opportunity, especially as I wanted to spend as little time as possible disturbing the owl. The track was steep and the owl had its back to the highest part of the track, which meant finding a location on the lower side and shooting from below the subject. From the description I received, I took both the Nikon D500 and D850 bodies, coupled to my Nikor AFS 600 f4 lens. The D500 did not allow sufficient habitat around the bird and so I shot with the full-frame D850. Ideally, the best choice would have been the D850 coupled to the Nikkor 180-400 f4 enabling a much finer zoom crop.

Essentially, I wanted to keep the ISO as low as possible without compromising shutter speed and depth of field. The issue was the bright background and the owl being rather dark amidst the bark and leaves. [Note how well camouflaged the owl’s plumage appears against the branches and peeling bark.] This image was shot at ISO 500, f7.1 and 1/80s with VR activated. Other images were shot at ISO 1250 and a fast shutter speed. There was wind to consider and ideally, I would have like a shutter speed of >1/1000s. Nonetheless, the image is sharp, especially the fur of the possum at 100%. The disappointment with this image is the head, the focal point being more in line with the breast of the bird. A single focal point struggled in the available light to lock on the head/eyes of the owl; I was using back button focus and recomposing the image. Although I was appraising the image in camera at 100% the high resolution of the screen and jpeg image led me to think the head/eyes were sharper than when viewed later on my desktop monitor. Nonetheless, the image is acceptable. One reason for choosing this image was the lighting and the composition of the owl, I liked the ¾ pose of the bird with its head turned towards the camera.

Camera Standard in LR was the profile I chose for processing this image. The White Balance was left as shot. I quite liked the Auto settings in the Tone Panel as a starting point. Auto doesn’t always work well but for this image it applied a pleasing edit from which to fine-tune Highlight, Shadows, Whites and Blacks. One these basic edits had been applied I took Sharpness to zero and edited the image in Topaz DeNoise, using the auto settings, which worked fine for this image. The edited image was then returned to LR, where I applied a small amount of Texture and an even smaller amount od Clarity. Be wary of Clarity, it is often over-used. The blue of the sky was far too saturated for my liking and so the blue was desaturated in the HSL panel. Whilst Topaz DeNoise had applied sharpening I determined that medium sharpening in LR did not create unwanted sharpening artefacts. Be aware that when using DeNoise, which applies sharpening, additional sharpening may not be warranted.
The filtered sunlight had created bright areas of leaves in the bottom LH corner of the image; to overcome this localised brightness, I applied a Graduation Filter to the LH corner, reducing Highlights by -100, and Shadows by -35. There were a couple of bright green leaves in this corner of the image and using the Adjustment Brush I applied Highlights -100, Blacks -46, Saturation -27, Dehaze +7.

The bright hanging bark on the RHS of the bird had an Adjustment brush mask applied with Highlights reduced to -26.

An Adjustment brush mask was applied to the head of the owl, and several edits applied; Texture +40, Shadows +15, Sharpness +59.

An additional mask was applied to the eyes of the owl; Shadows +42, Clarity8, Dehaze +2, Saturation +15 Noise +10.

Finally, an 8 x 10 crop was applied to this image. Given the smaller size of this bird, it is clearly a male.
EquipmentNikon D850 + Nikkor AFS 600 f4; !/80s @f7.1 + VR, ISO 500, manual exposure, monopod.
LocationWentworth Falls, New South Wales
Keywordsmale, feeding/with prey, adult
This image was selected as a Moderator’s Pick.
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