{"id":14009,"date":"2013-04-04T05:59:53","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T11:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=14009"},"modified":"2013-04-04T05:59:53","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T11:59:53","slug":"a-close-encounter-with-a-short-eared-owl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/04\/a-close-encounter-with-a-short-eared-owl\/","title":{"rendered":"A Close Encounter With A Short-eared Owl"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was a day I’m sure I’ll never forget – my first up close experience with an owl of any species in the wild.\u00a0 I’d only been photographing birds for about a year and I still had a lot to learn – about my gear, about technique and about my avian subjects.<\/p>\n

I spotted this Short-eared Owl from a distance,\u00a0perched on some phragmites that had been knocked down by snow.\u00a0 In the past, every time I’d tried to approach one of these owls it would fly off when I got about half as close as I needed to for a decent shot and I fully expected that to happen this time too.\u00a0 But it didn’t.<\/p>\n

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\"short<\/a><\/p>\n

I include this mediocre full frame (uncropped)\u00a0image only to show you the setting and what I was dealing with regarding obstructions.\u00a0 I was having a hard time getting a clear shot of the bird.\u00a0 By this time I literally had buck fever – I remember shaking with excitement as I slowly moved closer and closer (in my pickup, in a gravel parking\u00a0lot) fully expecting the bird to\u00a0take off at any moment.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"short<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0But eventually I was able to get so close that I had to shoot vertically.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"short<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0In the three minutes I spent with this owl it never did change its position on the perch and it\u00a0only gave me a few different poses.\u00a0 This was the most unobstructed angle I could get.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"short<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f\/8, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In my relative inexperience I made several mistakes while shooting this bird – among them the fact that I should have removed my teleconverter (tc) at this distance – I was marginally too tight on the owl which limited my composition choices.<\/p>\n

But what a morning it was!\u00a0 After so much time of never being able to get close enough\u00a0I was able to get even closer than this to two other owls on that same day (possibly the same bird?), though those perches were unnatural.<\/p>\n

It was a special feeling to be so close to a truly wild owl.\u00a0 This was one of those “early in my career” experiences that really got me hooked on bird photography.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a day I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll never forget \u2013 my first up close experience with an owl of any species in the wild. I\u2019d only been photographing birds for about a year and I still had a lot to learn \u2013 about my gear, about technique and about my avian subjects.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[334,356],"tags":[35,250,279],"class_list":["post-14009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-phragmites","tag-short-eared-owl"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3DX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14009","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=14009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}