Owl in flight
Barn owl taking a look around.
Barn owl taking a look around.
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Feb, 2015Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
10 miles north of a small town called Stanton in west Texas. There are many small dirt roads that take you to remote locations here and you never know what you might run across.Time
This was an early morning shot. Probably around 8:00am. It had been a very windy night so the sky was clear blue as far as you could see.Lighting
This was shot under natural lighting.Equipment
I shoot with a Nikon D7100 body and was using a Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR Lens. This is my go to lens when traveling as I do not have to change out lenses as often. West Texas is a very dry and dusty area so not having to change a lens is a big deal.Inspiration
I travel a lot with my job and usually I end up in area's that are remote. I keep my camera with me for when I run across anything of interest to take a shot of. In this case I had pulled off the dirt road I was on to take a shot of a derelict home. The roof was collapsed and the walls had started to fall in on itself. As I worked my way around the exterior of the house I saw this Owl flying right towards me. I zoomed the lens all the way to 300mm and starting shooting. I was able to take 4 good shots before the owl spotted me and flew away. I assume I was taking pictures of where it lived and it just happened to be coming home. I really wished I had a longer and faster focusing lens as the edges of the wings are not as crisp as I would have liked.Editing
I did straighten the image some and cropped out a bit of the open sky. I will then run the image through the Nikon capture NX-D software as it has the color correction for my camera built into the program.In my camera bag
My style of shooting is what I call run and gun. I have to keep it light as I don't have a lot of time to stop and set up for shots. I will usually just have my camera body and one to two lenses with me. I have the 55-300 zoom to handle longer shots and I have an 85mm macro lens that I use for close up and portraits. If I do have to use a flash it is the one built into the body of the camera.Feedback
If I have learned anything about west Texas it's that if you run across an abandoned building you have about a 90% chance to find a common barn owl in it. Approach as quietly as possible while not making yourself visible through any windows. I have crept up on several owls this way and taken good photos of them perched in the rafters of buildings. Early morning is usually best as they have just returned from a night of hunting and are sleeping. Just make sure not to disturb them too much as they will fly away if you do. The other aspect of west Texas is much of the land is owned by various oil companies and is fenced off, so don't trespass....
