I've been following this Great-horned owl nest for about a month. Yesterday I was fairly confident the owlets would fledge so I sent most of the day there. This image of the younger owlet was taken a bit after sunset from about 75 feet and is cropped from about 1/2 the frame. I'm on a hillside and nearly level with the nest which is 75 feet up and watched as the owlet exercised it's wings and made it's first practice flights to and from the spot it liked to stand on the nest to top of the dead tree to the tree it's on and then back down. It did this a number of times before blasting off to another tree about 30 feet away. As you can see in my EXIF data I was running out of light and was thrilled to capture this as well other images this day. It's simply amazing that I was able to shoot with a 1.4x TC on my XF 500mm f5.6 and have my Fuji X-H2s track in this very low light. This moment was about 10 minutes before the owlet blasted off. It will spend the next few months with it's sibling and parents before it becomes independent.
That is a nice reward for your dedication of time to get this image. Nothing easy about shooting owls in the canopy and with backlight!! High ISO, long reach and a slow shutter speed and you nailed it!! Nice work on the techs on this shot Morris
amazing shot, morris. looking at the owlet, the wings don't look big enough compared to the body size for it to be able to fly, but it did. thanks for your patience to spend most of the day waiting for that special moment.
Karl Witt wrote:
That is a nice reward for your dedication of time to get this image. Nothing easy about shooting owls in the canopy and with backlight!! High ISO, long reach and a slow shutter speed and you nailed it!! Nice work on the techs on this shot Morris
Karl
Thank you Karl,
As the sun was going down I remarked to the other two photographers that were standing near me that I maxed out on ISO and running out of shutter. One of them encouraged me to keep pushing which I was already doing and I appreciated the encouragement.
---------------------------------------------
louie champan wrote:
Time well spent Morris, you sure didn't let the conditions slow you down on getting the shot. Well done.
Thank you Louie,
I'm always going to try as the worst thing that happens is you have to delete an image.
---------------------------------------------
csinseattle wrote:
Morris,
Great capture, your time was well spent and payoff
Chris S
Thank you Chris
---------------------------------------------
Ronny Olsson wrote:
Nice Morris !
Ronny
Thank you Ronny
---------------------------------------------
volhoosier wrote:
amazing shot, morris. looking at the owlet, the wings don't look big enough compared to the body size for it to be able to fly, but it did. thanks for your patience to spend most of the day waiting for that special moment.
Thank you Wendall,
One of the things that surprised me about this owlet was that it figured out it could glide. All the other owlets I've seen fledge were flapping there wings very fast and had almost no range for a few days.
