Snowy Owls
My week with the Snowy Owls came perfectly timed in life came, like all pivotal moments perfectly timed. Post Covid and recovering from the loss of a sibling this was the reset button I sorely needed. There are watershed moments where you realise that all the adventures planned for the future need to be in the present - there's no time to waste.
In Native American folk lore the Snowy Owl is a symbol of wisdom, guidance and protection. A moment as it were, where I realised that as I lay belly down on the frozen prairie in -27C that I was right where I needed to be in time and space.
- Wing stretch ( above Left ) - lying on my belly after walking for a few kilometres through the farmers fields and knee deep snow ,this female snowy owl is beautifully backlit for me in the freezing midwinter conditions. Temperature was about -12 and I deliberately chose to shoot high key to keep her details crisp and allow for the subtle light to come through. The temperature is about -12C I shot at 1/3200sec on the Sony A1 for this shot to help control the highlights. I used an F8 aperture as she is moving quite fast and auto iso as I am often moving around and the action is too fast for manual adjustment of the iso.
- Morning flight-( above Right ) Snowy owl looks directly at me as I interrupt her search for food in the frigid winter conditions outside Ottawa in Ontario Canada. The morning light is golden and glowing and my 600 mm lens allowed me to smooth out the background with just a hint of colour shape and texture . The choice of shooting her at about 0900 in the morning is to reduce the contrast from harsher light later in the day and hence the golden glow on her face.
- The image Morning Flight won me Australian nature photographer the year at the Australian Photographic Prize in 2023 and overall Digital Photographer of the year. 2023. As she was moving towards me in this frame I was able to keep the aperture at 5.6 focused on her and not lose any detail .I shoot quite fast 3200th of a second with auto ISO. For any highlights that are blown out It’s easier to reduce highlights than to retrieve shadows so this is a deliberate technique.
It was tough work managing cameras and lenses and I managed to break my brand new monopod in the deep snow somewhere which was more than faintly annoying.It was just a perverse delight to be dragging myself out into the middle of the fields twice a day for a week to where they were hanging out and capture this palette and spectacle .
There was a lot of love for my new heated vest whilst out there for 3 hrs at a time