Backyard Visitor GHO

[Singletracklovr]

For the last couple days I have had a very cool visitor to my backyard.
What do you think?

Images are not cropped. PP= unsharpen mask, resized, black border.
Equipment= D300s, Sigma 500mm 7.2
manual focus, f8, AP, ss250, asa800

The fullsize (1024x680) images in my gallery look much better. Gallery link in signature.

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[ksbryan0]

What a great visitor to have hang around! I'm wondering if you took his baby pictures last year?! Nice set of images.

[WesternGuy]

Great images, thanks for sharing.

WesternGuy

[Singletracklovr]

Thanks for commenting on my photos guys...

What a great visitor to have hang around! I'm wondering if you took his baby pictures last year?! Nice set of images.

Wow I was wondering that myself although it probably doesn't work that way.
The GHO nest I photographed is about 6 miles (as the Owl flies) from my house.

I did spend a lot of time at the nest. From the first day they popped their heads over the nest until they left for good I would spend 2-4 hours per visit sometimes till 9PM, 3-4 times a week.
They were a blast to watch, such comics when mom would leave to hunt.

They knew I was there even though my camera was on a tripod with remote 50 foot from the tree and I was 300 feet away hiding in the bushes watching with binoculars. They would look over at me and start bobbing their heads and dancing around the edge of the nest then look back over at me. So funny.

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I was thinking about cropping a few of these but when I crop the pine tree in the background the photo just doesn't feel natural. It turns into a specimen photo. What do you guys/gals think? I know I've broken a few rules by centering the bird but at the time of the shooting my main goal was to not cut his ears or tail off.

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[ksbryan0]

Bob, I hear what you are saying on the cropping. I think you can crop the right side half way between the tail and the edge of the frame without any consequence. The left side is a different matter. I think the correct place to crop would be essentially down the middle of the tree trunk, but when I have done that to my images, I normally un-did the crop because it felt like the location context was off balance with only wood in front of the bird.