{"id":85525,"date":"2020-05-24T05:27:09","date_gmt":"2020-05-24T11:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=85525"},"modified":"2020-05-24T05:40:34","modified_gmt":"2020-05-24T11:40:34","slug":"short-eared-owl-on-a-natural-and-photogenic-perch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/24\/short-eared-owl-on-a-natural-and-photogenic-perch\/","title":{"rendered":"Short-eared Owl On A Natural (and photogenic) Perch"},"content":{"rendered":"

For me a completely natural photo of a Short-eared Owl on an elevated perch is unusual, bordering on rare. Owls perched on fence posts, wooden or metal, are the rule rather than the exception.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of several reasons I gravitate toward flight shots of this species is their tendency to perch on man-made structures that are often unattractive and it’s my preference to avoid the hand of man in my photos whenever possible.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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

So I was more than pleased when I found this presumed female (based on her overall dark color) perched on an old and weathered juniper stump in a remote area of northern Utah almost exactly four years ago today. She didn’t give me a lot of time with her and for some reason many of my photos of her were slightly soft but this one’s sharp and I like her stately pose.<\/p>\n

Just because a perch is natural doesn’t necessarily mean it’s photogenic but I like this one a lot. Its weathered and flowing lines are dripping with character, none of the weather-bleached wood is too bright (as is often the case with old stumps like this one) and there isn’t a human-made cut or chop mark to be seen. All of the breaks in the limbs are natural.<\/p>\n

In many bird photographs the background and\/or perch can be almost as important as the bird itself. In my view this is one of them.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: Don’t get me wrong. I love many of my photos of this species perched on old and weathered wooden fence posts but given a choice I prefer to avoid the hand of man.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For me a completely natural photo of a Short-eared Owl on an elevated perch is unusual, bordering on rare.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85526,"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":[334,356],"tags":[35,137,5129,1669,279,5130,311],"class_list":["post-85525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-female","tag-juniper-stump","tag-natural-perch","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-the-hand-of-man","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/short-eared-owl-4972-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mfr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85525","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=85525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}