Abandoned Barn Owl

Last summer (2010) I took this photo while nervously exploring around an abandoned barn and house near where I live.  I was taking photos of the ground level detritus and heard this owl flutter crossly at me (how did I know he was fluttering crossly?  Check out that look on his face.  You would have known it too).

I really liked the image, and took several versions but they were all handheld and very few came out well.  I couldn’t do a traditional HDR although I really wanted to, the light exposures were all blurry.  Even the regular exposures were wonky.  Luckily, the dark exposures came out good and I was able to make a decent single-exposure HDR from this one.  This is also cropped significantly, mostly to make the owl more prominent but also to get some distracting elements out.

Processed with all the toys- Photoshop, Photomatix Pro 4, and Topaz Adjust and Denoise.

This is finally being finished as a part of my 2011 daily photo blog, and I’m not sure if it will end up on http://www.kelleybard.com or not.  It might, I really like it.  It will depend on comments that I get here, on facebook at Kelley Bard Photography’s page, and on flickr “kelleybardphotography”.  I will try to post it on HDRspotting.com as well.  So we will see!