{"id":40518,"date":"2016-07-03T04:31:26","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T10:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=40518"},"modified":"2016-07-03T04:31:26","modified_gmt":"2016-07-03T10:31:26","slug":"barn-owls-in-flight-a-huge-motivator-for-learning-good-technique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/03\/barn-owls-in-flight-a-huge-motivator-for-learning-good-technique\/","title":{"rendered":"Barn Owls In Flight – A Huge Motivator For Learning Good Technique"},"content":{"rendered":"

If anything will give a bird photographer motivation to learn the techniques of photographing birds in flight it’s Barn Owls flying during daytime. This species is notoriously difficult to find flying in daylight but here in northern Utah we’re lucky because they often do so on very cold winter days.<\/p>\n

In early 2008 I was still very much a novice at photographing birds in flight. Whenever I tried I usually couldn’t even find the damn birds in my viewfinder because I didn’t have the required skills so I mostly gave up even making the attempt. But then on my trips to Farmington Bay\u00a0I occasionally noticed a photographer or two using tripods to photograph something<\/em> in flight. They weren’t in areas where Bald Eagles and Northern\u00a0Harriers are typically photographed so I watched them from a distance through my lens. They were photographing Barn Owls and those birds were flying during daytime! I had to have some of that action.<\/p>\n

My first (and second, and third…) attempts to find the owls in my viewfinder and get them in focus\u00a0were\u00a0laughable but a couple of the other photographers had pity on me and provided tips and guidance. During the month of\u00a0February, 2008 I eventually began to get some shots that interested\u00a0me.<\/p>\n

These are two of them, both taken on the morning of\u00a02\/15\/08.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This\u00a0owl is diving on prey.\u00a0Some context to the image is provided\u00a0by the faint horizon line at bottom – there are phragmites down there\u00a0just out of frame. At the time I was thrilled\u00a0to get this flight posture, even though we can’t really see the eye of the bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/10, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Earlier that same morning I caught this owl as it flew past me over the phrags (don’t even ask<\/em> me what I was doing at f\/10…).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

While I was composing this post I kept debating whether or not I should include this image and its explanation but I’m just small enough to do it so here goes.<\/p>\n

Three days after I took these first two images I photographed an incident that gave me some small satisfaction. The fellow in the blue coat is a very<\/em> well-known bird photographer who came to Utah to shoot some of our legendary Barn Owls flying in daylight. He and a buddy (just out of\u00a0frame to the right) had been gabbing away when this Barn Owl flew so close to them that they almost could have reached out and tickled it. But they missed the shots because they\u00a0weren’t paying attention – in fact they didn’t even raise their\u00a0lenses (they were shooting hand-held with what I believe were 400mm prime lenses) but they sure did notice what they missed.<\/p>\n

I’ll admit to being petty enough to have snickered a little to see a professional bird photographer\u00a0screw up an opportunity like the ones I had missed so many times before…<\/p>\n

Images like these first two\u00a0gave me hope and spurred me on. I spent countless hours practicing flight shots on gulls at local ponds and eventually my skills began to coalesce. I’m still working on them (it’s an endless process) but it’s kind of fulfilling to look back at some of those\u00a0very early flight shots and see how far I’ve come, even though there’s definitely much\u00a0further to\u00a0go.<\/p>\n

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

If anything will give a bird photographer motivation to learn the techniques of photographing birds in flight it’s Barn Owls flying during daytime.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40519,"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":[344,6,334,2782],"tags":[45,397,146,2875,309],"class_list":["post-40518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barn-owls","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-barn-owl","tag-farmington-bay","tag-flight","tag-photo-technique","tag-tyto-alba"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/barn-owl-9505-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-axw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40518","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=40518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}