May 25th 2019.
Saturday Morning
7AM
Well the first photo is timed right at 7, so probably more like 5 or 6 we got up and went for a walk. I brought all my camera stuff just in case. It’s a damn good thing I did.
We’re out at the same park that I talked about in the last few posts, playing pokemon. Doing the exercise thing. I’m looking for anything to take a picture of. A lady out walking sees my camera gear I’m lugging around and informs me of an owl in the area just up ahead. I thank her profusely and move ahead to see what I can spot.
That’s when I hear it, doesn’t sound like the hoot of an owl at all. But a screech of some kind of animal. It is an owl though, the most adorable cute little baby owl I’ve ever seen.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/200 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
Afraid the little guy would take off at any second I immediately started shooting. After a few minutes I realized even if he did take off I would have gotten what I wanted. So now I could play.
Set up the tripod, the remote trigger. All the toys came out.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/200 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
I’m selecting some of the best photos, but I took more than a hundred and fifty images. And keep in mind the 5D I was using is not known for it’s speed. Clocking in at 3.9 FPS, for comparison the camera I shoot with now has about 3 times that. I was there for about 3 hours in total once I saw the owl.
My girlfriend hung around for the first half hour or so, maybe an hour it’s hard to remember. Thankfully she handled most of the people who came up questioning. Which was a lot. We were directly on the trail and as I’ve mentioned it’s a busy park. Everyone that came by had to stop and ask what I was taking pictures of, then get out their phone and zoom wayyyyy in to take a nice blurry photo themselves. I can’t blame them too much, I would do the same if I didn’t own a DSLR. You don’t see this everyday.
I doubt I would strike up a conversation with the photographer, but that’s because I don’t prefer to initiate conversation anyway.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600m @150 - 1/160 Sec - F5.6 - ISO 800
So you can see this one was at the low end of the zoom, to give it a full idea of how far away it was. It was a good ways up, thankfully I found the perfect spot to see through the leaves.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/160 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
This little guy was so cute. He did a good bit of calling out early on, we looked around and my girlfriend spotted I assume the mother, which helped me identify them as Barred Owls.
However neither the mother nor my girlfriend stuck around for long. One of them I told to keep walking because I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. And if they finished their walk and I still wasn’t done they could head home and come back for me. Which is what happened, like I said I was there for hours observing.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/100 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/125 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
I’m sure the mother was thrilled that the baby was just sitting and calling for it over and over. I kept my distance and even got out of sight so I wouldn’t be bothering the little guy, but he just sat there calling. The mother was obviously trying to get in some early morning hunting. I bet that went well with this little guy raising such a racket.
It did get interested with a cluster of leaves , and by interested I mean in the destruction of them. I managed to get a few shots of it going to town trying to rip the leaves off the branch it was standing on.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/200 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/200 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
After a few minutes it succeeded and the bunch came free of the branch and tumbling down towards the ground. Not sure what exactly the end game was there. But he looked pretty pleased with himself after that.
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/200 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/200 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
Canon 5D Mark II w/Tamron 150-600mm @600 - 1/250 Sec - F6.3 - ISO 3200
This is another one of those times where being in the right place, with the right equipment, was just lucky. Going out for walks isn’t something I do. Exercise isn’t really something I do, though I should. Unless there is a secondary goal, like playing Pokemon Go, I never went outside just to be in nature. Photography was the reason on that day, and I’m sure glad it was.
It definitely helped me get the urge to keep going back out, keep trying to get better. More practice at photography and the better I would get at it.