{"id":18990,"date":"2013-10-04T05:29:27","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T11:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=18990"},"modified":"2013-10-04T05:29:27","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T11:29:27","slug":"burrowing-owl-in-dramatic-side-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/04\/burrowing-owl-in-dramatic-side-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Burrowing Owl In Dramatic Side Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

As every photographer knows, light angle can make or break an image.\u00a0 In static portrait\u00a0shots especially, partial side lighting (at perhaps 45 degrees to your\u00a0subject) emphasizes texture, patterns and shapes and helps to separate subject from background.\u00a0 It’s been said that side light\u00a0“sculpts” your subject.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/320, f\/9, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, canvas added for composition, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This young owl posed nicely for me just as the sun was coming up over the nearby Wasatch Mountains to the east.\u00a0\u00a0In fact it was so early (6:08 am) that light hadn’t yet reached the\u00a0legs, tail\u00a0and perch.\u00a0 The sun angle worked well with the pose, highlighting the\u00a0face, wing and back and there’s still plenty of\u00a0 detail in the shaded areas.<\/p>\n

However, side-lighting may be too severe for some subjects – especially birds with bright whites (or colors) in their plumage.\u00a0 In that situation it’s very easy to blow out the whites before you have enough exposure to get sufficient detail in the shadows.\u00a0 Some folks use fill\u00a0flash to compensate.\u00a0 I don’t, for aesthetic and ethical reasons.\u00a0 Flash\u00a0typically has an artificial look and I don’t like startling birds (especially owls) with flash.<\/p>\n

I’ve cropped fairly tightly here to emphasize the effects of light and shadow on the bird and I was pleased that light hadn’t yet reached the less than ideal perch (though getting a Burrowing Owl well isolated on an elevated perch of any kind is usually an unexpected bonus).<\/p>\n

I’m always somewhat amused when I get a good, close-up look at the bristle-like feathers on\u00a0the feet and legs of many Burrowing Owls.\u00a0 But this diminutive, charismatic and often comical species has a habit of amusing me…<\/p>\n

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

As every photographer knows, light angle can make or break an image. In static portrait shots especially, partial side lighting (at perhaps 45 degrees to your subject) emphasizes texture, patterns and shapes and helps to separate subject from background. It’s been said that side light “sculpts” your subject.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18991,"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":[3,6,334,365,16],"tags":[510,62,398,1683,1263,1682,551],"class_list":["post-18990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-burrowing-owls","category-photography-ethics","tag-athene-cunicularia","tag-burrowing-owl","tag-exposure","tag-fill-flash","tag-flash","tag-light","tag-side-light"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/burrowing-owl-1971-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4Wi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18990","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=18990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}