All three of these photos were taken before 10:15 AM in February at Farmington Bay WMA. The low angle of the morning sun in the winter sky will become important to the point I’m trying to make in today’s post.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
In the past I’ve endlessly discussed the importance of getting light in the eye (a catch light) of my avian subjects. Catch lights provide a glint or spark to the eye, giving the subject “life”. When catch lights are missing, especially in dark or black eyes, the eyes can appear almost as a black hole, lacking life.<\/p>\n
Some conditions and some subjects make catch lights more difficult to get. When the sun is high in the sky the brow ridge or eye orbit tends to prevent sunlight from striking the eyeball so there is no catch light reflected to the viewer. And if the eyes of the subject are set deeply in the skull, direct light has a much more difficult time reaching the surface of the eye.<\/p>\n
That’s where Barn Owls come in.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/barn-owl-0540-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"barn-owl-0540-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Barn Owls are notorious amongst bird photographers for their deeply set eyes that make catch lights difficult to get. This owl is so strongly side lit that there’s very little light reaching the right side of its face so it’s completely understandable why there’s no light in its right eye, the only one we can see.<\/p>\n
If this had been any other species of bird I most likely wouldn’t have a catch light in its eye either.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/barn-owl-0258-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"barn-owl-0258-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
But the right side of the face of this owl is completely lit up. In this situation most birds would have a catch light in the right eye, but not Barn Owls. Their eyes are too deeply set in their skull for direct light to reach the eye in this lighting situation.<\/p>\n
Really really sharp eyes may spot a very faint catch light in the right eye of this bird. But it’s so faint it’s effectively missing.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/barn-owl-0643-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"barn-owl-0643-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Even in this shot, where the owl is looking at me so we see both sides of its face and both sides are lit up by the morning sun behind me, no direct light is reaching the surface of its eyes so there’s no light in either eye. Barn Owls give us very little wiggle room when it comes to getting catch lights in their eyes.<\/p>\n
As a result of this anatomical quirk I’m a little more tolerant of not having light in the eye of my Barn Owl subjects than I am with other species of birds.<\/p>\n
But only a little.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
PS – As an afterthought I thought I should include a photo demonstrating that it actually is possible to get a catch light in Barn Owls.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/barn-owl-0624-version-3-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And a demonstration of why it’s so aggravatingly difficult to get light in the eyes (catch lights) of Barn Owls.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[344,5,6,334,2782],"tags":[45,3151,4029,146,567,309],"class_list":["post-103537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barn-owls","category-bird-oddities","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-barn-owl","tag-catch-lights","tag-deeply-set-eyes","tag-flight","tag-light-in-the-eye","tag-tyto-alba"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/barn-owl-0540-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qVX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103537"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103581,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103537\/revisions\/103581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}