Barn Owl (Night Shot)
Photo taken on 26 November 2016 (at night) in Workum, the Netherlands.
Photo taken on 26 November 2016 (at night) in Workum, the Netherlands.
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Mar, 2017Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was taken on a local winter market in a city called Workum, the Netherlands. It's in the north of the country. The owners of this owl is also the owner of most of my other owl photo's. He happens to be living not that far away, so we may be doing a thing together for even more photo's with time. Back to this photo, it was sitting on it's resting spot and by trying to make sounds like a mouse. The red light of the camera seemed to be fascinating for the owl as well which is why it acted like this.Time
This was a winter market between 5 PM and 10 PM, the photo itself was shot around 8 PM. With the dark fully set in and the lights in the background I managed to shoot this photo. I am learning on my own, so there are always points to improve. Which is why I went out this specific evening as a way to teach myself a few new things.Lighting
The lighting in the back are street lights and lights from shops and market stalls mostly. I wanted them to have a bokeh effect along with everything else in the background. If you look closely, you may be able to spot people standing around. There is also 1 light that seems to be closer, and yes it is. It's actually right above the bird and I thought it would be a good thing to have that slightly in the photo to get a extra effect. It's the light top left on the photo. The owner of the bird had a string with regular bulbs hanging at his market stall which this was one of the lights of.Equipment
I used my trusty Nikon D5200 with a SIGMA 17-70mm lens, obviously I couldn't use any flash in this case. It simply would scare the birds that he had with him. I prefer not to be one of those people that rely on scaring animals just to get a nice photo. So the second goal of this night was taking photo's without any flash. I only used the lights that I had around me that evening. Yes, a lot of photo's were ruined but if the goal is to learn you don't expect to even have a single photo that is good enough. You simply need to focus on learning what you need to do in a situation like that.Inspiration
The goal of that evening was strictly to learn, but I noticed this bird sitting like this which made me take a closer look and see if I could make something nice out of it. I did walk around a few times to see what angle would be good and how I could use the light optimal for this photo. As it is a living animal you will always have movement to some degree in your photo's. It's like having a child in front of you that goes it's own way doing what it wants. So it took me a lot of attempts to get his shot.Editing
As you may be able to tell from the photo, it isn't entirely sharp. I intended to have the face of the owl sharp and the rest blurred out, which partially succeeded. I used Lightroom to do some adjustments and sharpen it a bit.In my camera bag
First thing I usually pack are additional things that are not always needed, things like a cleaning kit, paper tissues and other things. After that I make sure have a spare battery and at least 1 extra 64GB SD card packed. Not that I will likely need them, but more a 'just in case' thing. Once that is packed I decide what I lens I want to take with me, which pretty much translates to whether I want to take my Tamron 70-300mm with me or not. For this specific photo I did not have to take it as I didn't see the point in doing that. As last thing I pack my Nikon D5200 with Sigma 17-70mm lens already attached. I do own a Sigma 50mm lens, but I rarely use it since I have the 17-70mm lens now. I do have 2 different bags, depending on where I go to I take the apropiate bag with me. A trip to a zoo or a airport for example would force me to take a bigger bag with me as more would fit in it. But almost everything I usually take by default also fits in a smaller bag which is now usually my go-to bag. A simple bag that can hold my camera and 2 lenses nicely and still have some space left for a cleaning kit and some other things.Feedback
I think it would be a good idea to have the background fairly well lit, so a street or some shops in the background would be excellent. Aside from that the lighting above the subject that isn't too bright would be perfect, in this case a string with several common bulbs did the job just fine. I strongly recommend not to use the auto function on your camera as it will make things harder for you to control what settings you wish to use. Also a big problem will be the internal flash that pops out and forces it's will up on you. Walk around the subject to see what angle is the best for what you wish to achieve, don't rush a shot like this and specially if it's with a animal. Patience wins the game in this case.
