![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/burrowing-owl-4649b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"burrowing-owl-4649b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nSometimes a bad habit can give us a second chance and allow us to avoid making a mistake.<\/p>\n
I’ve mentioned before how much I despise culling images but in the past I’ve been pretty good about keeping up with that painful process. Typically I quickly review my photos on the day they were taken and cull them that same day or very soon after. But in the last several months while I haven’t been feeling well I haven’t been doing it. Any of it.\u00a0I\u00a0was developing a bad habit and\u00a0as the number of images built up it became more and more intimidating and\u00a0depressing just to think about. So I didn’t. Much.<\/p>\n
Until yesterday when I tackled\u00a0that hideous\u00a0monster. I had over 26,000 photos to cull and I just dug in and got started. After many hours I had it whittled down to 21, 519. Roughly… It’s a good start.<\/p>\n
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1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n This was one of them I ran across again during the process – an adult Burrowing Owl photo taken on Antelope Island two weeks ago. On the day I took this\u00a0shot and others like it and then quickly reviewed them at home\u00a0I planned on\u00a0deleting all of them. After all, about a third of the owl is hidden by sagebrush and because of a thin cloud in front of the early morning sun there’s better light on the background than there is on the bird.<\/p>\n But when I looked at the image a little more carefully yesterday\u00a0I decided I liked it. I tried to analyze why and finally came up with\u00a0the answer(s) – there are\u00a0two of them. First, I love fresh green sagebrush, for its soft gray-green color, for its smell and for its imagery of western history.<\/p>\n But for me the most important reason involves a memory. For years Burrowing Owls used to nest prolifically in this\u00a0same small\u00a0area. Many of my best shots of the species were taken here, including the middle photo in the Burrowing Owl\u00a0panel of the rotating banner at the top of my blog. But all that ended when tourists and clueless and\/or unethical\u00a0photographers ‘discovered’ the nesting owl burrows. They would walk out into the middle of the burrow area and chase angry owls from sagebrush to sagebrush as they tried to get close with their cameras. Once I observed a group of folks with point and shoot cameras walking right on top of an active burrow and looking down into it.<\/p>\n All that cruel and unethical activity made the owls abandon the area. Until I saw this owl two weeks ago\u00a0I hadn’t seen another Burrowing Owl in the area in at least the last 5 years, maybe more. So you can imagine how happy I was to see it there and why this image means more to me than it might to anyone else.<\/p>\n And that’s ok. It’s pretty typical for photos to have very personal meaning for some and not for others. That’s one of the joys of photography.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n PS\u00a0 – Back in 2012 I documented and published a blog post about one of the ***hole photographers as he abused nesting burrowing owls in this exact location. He’s one of the clowns that chased the owls away from the area for years. If you’re interested in seeing that post it can be found at this link – “A Plea For Respect For The Burrowing Owl<\/a>“. But be forewarned, it’s likely to make you angry.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes a bad habit can give us a second chance and allow us to avoid making a mistake.<\/p>\n