Short Eared Owl’s Part 2

Short Eared Owl in flight

Today I ventured again over to Papercourt Meadows to try and capture a short eared owl in flight. Having arrived at 2:30pm it was completely dead until around 4:45 and then we got the first show. The place has become so well know with birders and photographers there must have been  30 or more standing around.

It is incredibly frustrating as it seems that no matter where you stand the owl’s seem to be in another part of the meadow however on this occasion two of them decided to fly in my direction. At that point I was somewhat taken back and struggled to actually get the bird within the view finder. This was made all the more difficult as I was using a 500mm fixed focal lens with a 1.4 extender on a Canon 1D mk 1V so the focal length was 910mm  making the field of view really small.

I did manage to capture this one that is reasonable and I like the way the setting sun was shining on the owl’s face.

 

Great Studio session today

Had a superb studio session today with a great family.

All in all the kids were very obliging and the whole thing was wrapped up in 45 mins. Now that’s a result!

As always it pays to have backups of everything as when I went into the studio prior to the family arriving I found that one of my flash heads decided to expire.

Slight panic as that particular head had my big soft-box’s which meant that I wasn’t able to use a soft box. In the end I swapped out to another head and used a shoot through brolly.

I used my 1D Mk 1V with a 24-105L F4 Canon lens. Set the main light at f8 with the background lights at F11