![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/barn-owl-0266b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"barn-owl-0266b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nSerendipity strikes again but this time it took an unusual form.<\/p>\n
After a shooting session my normal work flow is to cull images and then categorize\u00a0the ones I’ve kept\u00a0in albums by species. So theoretically at least all photos on my three\u00a0computers should be in one of those albums\u00a0and when I want to find a photo of a particular species one way to find it is to click on that species\u00a0album and browse the images. Once I’ve culled photos there shouldn’t be any that aren’t in an album.<\/p>\n
But yesterday while browsing through my images on one of my two older computers something made me click on “Items not in any album”. I expected it to be empty but it wasn’t. I found a\u00a0handful of\u00a0photos that I’d somehow missed categorizing years ago\u00a0and this is one of them.<\/p>\n
In other words this photo has been “lost” for almost eleven years (it was taken at Farmington Bay\u00a0on February 18, 2008).<\/p>\n
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1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n It was a frigid\u00a0morning when I caught this Barn Owl hunting over the phrags. This sky color is typical of Farmington Bay when it’s this cold, partly because of all the moisture in the air. I like the phrags anchoring the owl at the bottom of the frame and I’m always delighted to get a Barn Owl in flight.<\/p>\n I was disappointed to not have any light in the eye but I\u00a0allow myself just a little wiggle room on that standard when it comes to Barn Owls. Because of their deeply set eyes they’re the most difficult species to get light in the eye that I photograph and their crepuscular hunting habits certainly don’t help in that regard. But this time it was those deeply set eyes that foiled me with this angle of light.\u00a0Not getting a catch light is\u00a0a regular occurrence with Barn Owls.<\/p>\n So far this winter Barn Owls hunting in daylight\u00a0have been relatively rare but if we get more snow and it turns even colder that will likely change. I’m\u00a0seriously torn by what to\u00a0wish for – Barn Owls hunting in daylight means they’re really struggling to survive in the cold and deep snow but if they don’t hunt during the day I almost never see them.<\/p>\n Whatever happens in the next couple of months in regard to cold and snow I wish them well.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Notes: <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Serendipity strikes again but this time it took an unusual form.<\/p>\n\n