Thank you for sharing this footage and the Tipp with the white balance.... have a great 2023🙋‍♂

Thank's for the tip :o) Love the Owl

Hi. I always adjust WB manually using K temperature and the axis before and during photographing. Of course, camera screen and pc monitor don´t have same colors and who knows if camera screen is the right reference, but I am obsessioned about photography being a catch of reality, that´s why I believe it´s almost impossible to know during post editing what kind of light tone it was when you were shooting. You can modify sharpening or other stuff, but you can´t remember WB. You can make an idea if you are very experienced but not that much. Even at the same moment shooting at different points you can see WB variations (i.e. if you are shooting a kingfisher in a stream and then want to shoot a bird in flight, the sky would be different). Nikon have the tendency to look a little green cast, so I always have to use the axis. The D90 needs adjustment, the D500 a little too, but the D7100 is a lot greener. On this particular chase of catching reality I found NL picture control is far way the most realistic. I set it all to 0. Any sharpening, hue, contrast adding. When I watch images on Flickr I find an abuse of over sharpening, over contrasting and over saturation. Nature is catchy the way it is, we don´t need to alter it to look any better in my opinion.

Much needed! Thanks.

Absolutely! Great tip! I rarely let my camera select anything automatically.

Great tip. Wonderful video & images.

Knowing your love for Great Grey's I thought of you yesterday when I came across a short video on the weather channel. Please check it out. A photographer from Quebec was out for a days photography when an owl landed on her lens, much to the delight of her fellow photographers. Hope you can find it, its so cool. Neil. Bye the way love your work in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone.

Great tip never new auto wb would make such difference in woods

Great suggestion!

Thanks! 👍👍👍

Beautiful.

Thanks for the WB tip

The owl such a great subject so well represented, beautiful Steve.

Great final pics, as always! Your white balance tip has me thinking, thanks. Could do without the dramatic music in the first half though...imho.

I’ve been waiting for one of your ggo videos for way too long!

No apologies necessary. We probably all watch your videos to learn something so I for one am grateful for the tip! Love your pictures and videos.

Great as always! Loved the dramatic music! And those images 😍😍

Thank you for the white balance tip it really makes a deference in my photos and videos.

Nice seeing a video from you. Even better with a Great Gray!!! Solid tip, ejoyed the photos too👍👍

Thanks for sharing the WB tip!! Loved the video and your images of the owl were fantastic!

Thank you for the tip about WB. Now that I look at all my forest photos all I see is purple. Great video!

we like when you talk man!!! we wanna see you just as much as we wanna see the wildlife!

Its the great grape owl 😂

So lucky to see the Great Grey Owl so often!! Cool video Steve!

Great tip

Thank you for talking about this! I see SO MANY photos on IG that could be great but either the person forgets or doesn’t even notice the color cast and in my opinion it just ruins the image. Hopefully more people will see this video!!

Great tip on the white balance. It makes so much sense. Have you ever talked about the best times to find lakes? Times of the day and types of areas?

Yes Steve your colors are right on,i do the same,no auto white balance

I've been manually setting white balance for time lapses, will try this for wildlife too. Thanks for the tip Steve. 🙏

Hi Steve it's incredible to think that you were there photographing their beautiful owl when it dived on a mouse

Thank you for the white balance tip. We took some wonderful shots of diving purple owls just north of you last fall. We'll make sure this year's pictures lack that tint. Also, you mentioned that this was your 'little tip'. I think there might be a bigger one you could give people. I see one photographer after the next trying to shoot raptors from a tripod. If anyone can pull that off with regular success, their hand-eye coordination is better than mine will ever be. When I noticed you were shooting hand-held, I figured the rest of the video would be worth watching. :)

It's always fun to watch you getting out with owls. Nice color balance tip.

A great day indeed. Our 45th Anniversary, our oldest son’s 40th Birthday and we finally got some much needed rain this weekend!

Indeed Steve, I didn't learn to abandon auto WB until I started shooting video and had to resort to breaking clips up to grade them separately -- THAT is a good learning-what-not-to-do experience!

thanks for the tipp Steve... very nice the Great Grey Owl

Great images, excellent tip . Thanks!

Excellent as always Steve! Thanks for bringing us along. I wish that I could find a spot like that. I'm not seeing any owls anywhere!

Great job there Steve! Thanks for sharing tips and images.

thanks

Great tip! Can't wait to get out there this week and try this adjustment - thanks for sharing!

Good observation. When I have the time i go into live view and adjust white balance so what I see with my eye matches what I see on the rear screen.

Well I manually set up my white balance today thanks to your tip Steve. Made a big difference!!! Thanks for that! Cheers

I can definitely attest to purple greens from auto white balance. When I got my first digital SLR, I didn't know there were white balance settings. Film was either daylight or tungsten, and my point and shoot digital camera hadn't had anything about wb in settings. I shoot my dslr like my film slr, so manual everything, so I hadn't really gone into the menus much. I couldn't figure out why all my photos were so weirdly purple. I live in Maine, so it's ALL green forest unless shooting the ocean. It was very frustrating. I did some research and discovered the culprit was the wb. I then had to do some experimenting to figure out which setting I preferred. Cloudy works best for me. Great tip for fellow nature photogs. Great video and photos. I love when you have videos of the owls. Thank you for sharing. :) Paula

Hum… this info sounds familiar! Lol. The Mootz’s had a great time. Thanks again Steve.

Very good Steve. Made my Sunday morning coffee here in Australia much more enjoyable. Cheers.

Great shots, Steve. And an excellent point made.

What a great tip. Thank you!

Every time I watch your intro I can't believe that ram takes on that literal "uphill battle"

I absolutely loved this video Steve! The music was awesome with the owl hunting. I always appreciate your photography tips and I love walking with you via video as you see these amazing creatures from God!

Great tip and great shots. I will give it a try.

The owl is my favorite animal to photograph. Great job steve and cant wait for fall and winter. the best seasons for photography. cheers brother

For BIF nature photography, I have found that 6200K seems almost perfect. Great owls clips and stills. I just subscribed.

Thanks for the tip. Love your videos

Great tip! I will try that. Thanks!

Steve, thank you so much for the tip! I've been shooting manual and raw for ages, but it never occured to me to set my WB to anything but auto. Now i've set it to daylight and shot a bit in overcast sky and what a difference it makes! I just always assumed the camera would automatically set the ideal WB for me but obviously with a lot of green or yellow or brown in frame it's a different thing.

Yes! missed seeing your vids. Hope there are more this fall and winter!

Thanks Steve, this is good info!

ahhaha so funny and cool video

Good advice - thanks!

I see that on Black Bear photos as well.

Great images, and useful tip about WB. I usually shoot in AWB/RAW and adjust in PP, but your tip will assist in not having something else to do in PP. Cheers

Excellent video Steve, I love your GGO videos and also a great tip. I have noticed the magenta cast and now I know how to deal with it, thank you!!

Simply shoot RAW. There is so much more to reveal in post in contrast to JPEG, especially when applying selective masks on the birds themselves.

I shoot with either Expodisc or grey card. Easy to set white balance in Lightroom

All my photos are shot at 5800K and I make adjustments in post if necessary!

I got to see and Photograph a Great Grey Owl for the first time Recently at a Birds of Prey Centre. Unfortunately we don't have them living here in the wild, some day I hope I will get to see one in the wild. It's easy to see why they put Great in their Name, It's a very impressive creature to see in the flesh. I'm going to use that white balance tip for sure the next day I go out. Beautiful Photos Steve 👍🏻

Great tip on the WB Steve. Curious if you are shooting in Manual Mode. Noticed the aperture and the ISO remained constant with you changing the shutter speed. Are you using the EVF viewfinder to ensure correct exposure while adjusting shutter speed or from having done this so long you just know here to be with shutter speed?

A thumbs up from me, few times I've left my A1 WB on auto and even auto priority white and noticed that magenta on the browns especially in poor light. I shoot in raw but its a PIA to alter it in post . Anyway thanks again for this Steve, it is sort of an obvious thing but a lot of us still forget and use AWB

Great videos and photos! Hope the Z9 at least matched the Sony. That’s sound WB advice. I shot in cloudy for years and adjusted in post but recently tried auto and the colours were nearly always out requiring more work post so have swapped back.

Hi Steve, great tips! However I think there's one major exception to your rule of just using daylight and cloudy white balance modes. If you do any spotlighting wildlife photography auto white balance is the best way to go in my opinion. Way more realistic colours than any other mode I've tried during spotlighting.

Good tip however not necessary for people who shoot with Nikon gear from D850 and earlier. Auto 1 mode in Nikons will get it right 90% of the time and with raw files easy to fine tune it. Great day out with the Owl thanks for sharing.

Was this on the 11th? I may have seen the same on in Yellowstone for my first trip!

I’ve only ever shot in awb, I just assumed for raw shooting that’s what you do. Going to try setting it manually now tho

Good morning Steve. Just watched your latest video. Always look forward to new content from you. We don’t have GGO where I live, but I’m always on the look out for them anytime we travel out west. Love the white balance tip, and will incorporate that. I do have another question. Are you shooting in aperture priority, or full manual? Thanks for educating us and sharing the beautiful Tetons and her wildlife.

Thanks for the tip, Steve! Have you tried Natural Light Balance, with the D850?

How is the eye tracking on the A1 with the owl?

Great tip and as always great stuff Steve! BTW, I see f/2.8 on all the images. You still sticking with the 400mm?

Hey Steve, as always awesome videos and photos! What camera are you using Sony or Nikon. I am hobbyist photographer, so I always shot with AWB (poor excuse I know, I am learning), great tip. Thanks for photography lesson

Another great video, thanks for the tip, i will try it in Yellowstone next week. I notice that your are alone wandering in the forest. Do you worry about bears? Do you carry bear spray? Or are the owls in areas where the bears inhabit less?

Do you have any tips for Great Horned Owls? I hear them almost every night around the neighborhood but have only seen a pair once at night as silhouetes high in a conifer near my house.

Setting kelvin is a great thing all nature photographers should do rather than sticking to AWB.. Great vidoe as always...

I noted t your camera at f/2.8 and ISO at 1600 in order to, I assume, maximize shudder speed. This was done even when the owl was stationary. Do you not care about the slightly added noise or is it so insignificant as to not bother with? Great video as usual.

I never leave my WB on auto. I prefer to Set it on daylight (which most of the time is) and make changes in lightroom. I don’t want the camera to take the decisions for me. Also I have never seen an owl in my life. There was a small one close to my holiday house, which I heard every evening, but it has been impossible to locate. I was told that the specific species is very difficult to find. I will continue my quest though until I find one. Any chance you can do a video with some tips on how to locate and shoot owls?

Score by John Williams, was this a Sony or Nikon shoot? I notice you've been shooting Sony lately.

Why not just shoot in RAW format? I enjoyed your owl pictures very much.