Great grey owl

Hi, couple shots from yesterday. Ive photographed five Great grey owls for past 4 months and finaly one of them let me the come close enough (around 5 meters!) to get shots what Ive wanted for like 2 years. Only issue was one litle twig that was in the way. But still I am happy.

Colours might look odd, because my calibrated pc screen is broken and I am posting these from uncalibrated laptop. Last picture is cropped only to the square format. No cropping on the other two.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

That's REALLY close, especially the first one.
Great captures.

Twig or not twig ... great pictures!!! Nice job of getting close!!

I would LOVE to see a GGO.
You are very lucky.
Nice photos.

Nice catch, in the last one he almost looks angry at the intrusion.

Heh, thanks everyone for your comments. Hard work pays off, aparently. The first one is taken with 70-200, so is the second picture. Last one with 70-200 + 1.4 tc.

nicely done Ville

lovely bird. maybe you could have the best of both worlds and clone those twigs out?

Lucky you!

Great photos...I just took a couple minutes with it in photoshop. A little more time on it and I think the twig wouldn't be an issue.

Yea it wouldnt be an issue to photoshop those twigs out, but the problem is myself. I dont want to "manipulate" my images. I wanna keep them as they are. But in my opinion its not a "real" photograph anymore, when the twigs have been taken out. Someone should brainwash me!

Wow, nice shots! Such a beautiful bird.

Photo123abc wrote in post #15822599
Yea it wouldnt be an issue to photoshop those twigs out, but the problem is myself. I dont want to "manipulate" my images. I wanna keep them as they are. But in my opinion its not a "real" photograph anymore, when the twigs have been taken out. Someone should brainwash me!

I feel conflicted on this point too, just not sure how I feel about it. I guess I'd like to hear more from both sides since I haven't been involved with that debate yet.

I'd agree if there was no editing done, but do you adjust brightness/contrast/sh​arpening, etc. at all? To me that's still manipulation.

Houston1852 wrote in post #15823857
I'd agree if there was no editing done, but do you adjust brightness/contrast/sh​arpening, etc. at all? To me that's still manipulation.

This is just my gut reaction as I really don't have a refined opinion yet, but to me brightness/contrast is just reproducing the image as accurately as you can compared to what it was you saw in the field. Cloning out twigs or otherwise altering it into something that isn't representative of what you actually saw just seems a little dishonest I guess. Maybe somewhat depends on how you view photography. If it's an art form where the goal is to produce the most beautiful image, then I guess everything's fair game and I can understand that view. I'm personally a scientist by education and trade so maybe I'm programmed to think about it a bit more objectively, as if I was a journalist documenting an event. Maybe I need to get over that. Sounds like a question of philosophy. Just thinking out loud here, I'm definitely open minded about it.

No need to get over that. Everybody has their reasons for what they like/dislike. I guess for me, if the twig was within reach at the time I took the photo I'd move it. If not within reach and I'm still capable of removing it, I might as well. I guess for me if it makes the difference between a good photo and a great photo, I'll take the great photo. Then again I'm no professional, it's just a hobby. I do understand the original posters feelings on this, I just don't agree : )