{"id":36530,"date":"2016-01-11T06:20:40","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T13:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=36530"},"modified":"2016-01-11T07:00:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T14:00:19","slug":"barn-owl-flight-series-from-small-in-the-frame-to-frame-filling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/11\/barn-owl-flight-series-from-small-in-the-frame-to-frame-filling\/","title":{"rendered":"Barn Owl Flight Series – From Small In The Frame To Frame-filling"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve never before been able to get this many sharp images of a bird in flight in a single pass. Many of the photos have similar flight postures so for today’s post I thought I’d\u00a0attempt something new and try to give the viewer a feeling for my experience with this Barn Owl as it approached from a distance (rather than feature just the “best” shots). Early\u00a0images show the bird far away and include more habitat but as the\u00a0owl\u00a0gets closer many of them include only the\u00a0owl and the background mountains and clouds.<\/p>\n

These images are all\u00a0presented in the sequence they were taken.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I photographed this Barn Owl two weeks ago at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge as it hunted the phragmites edges near the road. I could see it hunting off\u00a0to the west of me so I stopped my pickup on the road and just waited to see what would happen. The bird landed a time or two and then took off and headed my way. And it just kept on a-comin’!<\/p>\n

This is the first shot I kept of the series, taken when the bird was still at quite a distance. The lower background is\u00a0stands of phragmites and the upper background is a mix of clouds and\u00a0the snow-covered and partially shaded Promontory Mountains.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because it was hunting the owl was often looking down as it approached but for this presentation I’ve chosen images where it was looking up in my general direction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve also tried to choose images with\u00a0 a variety of wing positions but my choices were limited because the owl didn’t significantly\u00a0alter its direction\u00a0as it leisurely came my way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the typical moth-like flight of an owl the elevation of the\u00a0bird varied\u00a0from shot to shot so I chose to crop this one vertically to include the anchoring phrags at bottom.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve also chosen these images for their catch lights in the right eye. Obviously when the bird was looking down I had no light in the eye at all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like the symmetry of this image\u00a0(this is the only\u00a0photo of these nine that I’ve posted earlier).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

By now the owl was pretty close to me and I was pleasantly surprised by how few images had clipped or cut off wings. The relatively steady course of the bird in my direction certainly helped with that issue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

In many of the images the owl was gliding which gave me only horizontal wing positions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the last shot in the series that I kept. The image is full frame and I was lucky that the\u00a0owl tipped slightly so that I didn’t clip wings or get wing-tips too close to the frame edge. The bird\u00a0came very close to my pickup\u00a0and I remember breathlessly saying “Wow!” as it passed.<\/p>\n

All in all I took a total of 65\u00a0images of this owl as it approached and kept 45 of them. Nearly all of the 65 were sharp or sharp enough\u00a0and very few had clipped wings or body parts. I liked the backgrounds and even though the bird was slightly side-lit so the left eye was shaded I refuse to complain about the light angle. In my experience that’s a combination that almost never happens with a bird in flight\u00a0and this time it was with a\u00a0Barn Owl!<\/p>\n

The photography gods were\u00a0smiling on me that morning.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I’ve never before been able to get this many sharp images of a bird in flight in a single pass.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36536,"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":[344,338,334],"tags":[45,49,566,146,1398,178,250,2524,309,311],"class_list":["post-36530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barn-owls","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","tag-barn-owl","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-catch-light","tag-flight","tag-full-frame","tag-hunting","tag-phragmites","tag-promontory-mountains","tag-tyto-alba","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/barn-owl-3719-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9vc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36530","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=36530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}