Summer Evening With A Little Owl

27.06.18 - North Wales

This evening I've arranged to photograph a family of Little Owls that have just fledged on the edge of a working farm, the youngsters are still preferring to stay in the adjacent ivy clad tree, on the other hand the parent birds are quite bold and happy to take advantage of the free offerings.

Hidden out of sight with the camera set up I'm ready for some action, and sure enough within a couple of minuets one of the parent birds appears lading straight on its main perch, all too soon its apparent the "cropper" (camera) with the 500mm attached is massively over kill chopping off part of the bird in the image, time to change lens.

In the early evening the low sun angle is in front slightly to the side, not how I usually shoot. With little experience in dealing with these conditions I'm out of my comfort zone, I shoot a few images trying to work out what settings work and what dosen't whilst watching the dof, shallow enough to blur the background but always wanting the bird to be totally in focus, some I manage, some I don't.

In the distance a building with an elevation constructed of part pale coloured concrete block and part dark metal cladding creates a light / dark line in the image, to compensate I have to stand on tip toes and angle the lens down pointing against the dark cladding, it's all work arounds that will benefit a similar future encounter.

Having now process some of the images they lack the strong colour and clarity that you would normally expect shooting with the sun behind, but I think there's other qualities the images have showing the owl back lit in the low evening sun light, it's a different quality you may or may not like but I do like where the feather edging has caught the sun, it almost has a transparent quality.

Little Owl (adult)