I’ve been spending my limited free time with a family of little owls lately, and I was waiting to see if I got some really good images of these before posting anything up. But, wildlife photography is about playing the long game, and trial & error. You don’t get rewarded overnight and you have to put the time in, so I thought it might be fun to post an article showing my first early efforts with these owls, warts and all! So that includes images with obstructions in the way, distractions in the background, poor light etc. The reason? I thought it might be nice to show the progress, as well as the time and effort that often has to go in to getting ‘the shot’. What you see below are the best of five visits so far. So here we go, in all it’s glory…the story to date…

THE BACK STORY

I’ve been trying to find these great little birds close to home (remember, I live in London, near heathrow. NOT a wildlife hot spot) for some time and about a month ago, I was discussing the owls that used to live in a park fairly local to me with another photographer friend of mine Jai Grieve. I’d never seen them there but Jai had done a few years previous, and so we went to check out the area he had seen them before. Amazingly, we saw one on the first visit, albiet at quite a distance. Result! However, after several visits to the same spot it became very clear they had a large amount of thick trees and foliage to move about in and spotting them was very hit and miss. Then, whilst in the park on another photo trip with my buddy David Lloyd we, by complete chance, found another pair of owls with young, in a totally different area and a much easier setting. And so you’re up to speed. That’s where I’m at now, spending as much of my free time as I can with this family. I do fear though that I am a bit late to the party as the owlet is already flying quite far from the nesting tree and I expect will fully fledge soon, so the adults will be less active, if they even stick around.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGES

I’ve managed to get a couple of nice environmental images of them in the trees, with my favourite being the one below. The owl decided to settle down and watch the glow of the first rays of the morning sun as they shot through the branches of the surrounding trees. I’ve cropped in a bit to get a little more impact on the owl, but at full res it’s quite a lovely scene and looks great on my monitor.

I know there are those that often say an ‘envornmental image’ is just an excuse that a photographer couldn’t get close enough, but there is definitely something to be said for photos that include the habitat. But I’ll state now for the record though, I DO want some close up portraits too and I won’t for a second pretend I’m happy to only get habitat shots. But things are slowly improving, and although the owls are mostly hidden amongst branches, the views are getting clearer. I don’t want to jinx it, but I think they may be slowly getting used to us being there…

EASY TO SEE THEM BUT EVEN EASIER TO SEE ME

What makes this family of owls easier to photograph is that they spend their time flying between 5 tree’s and a fence, that are all quite open in a field, making them far easier to spot. Of course the down side to that, is it makes it far easier for them to spot us too! And so, as those of you who follow me on Twitter will know, I’ve been up at 4am at times making trips with both David and Jai to be at the site before sunrise, or I’ve been there till after sunset hoping to get a few photos in the bag.

So far, we’ve had them hunting on the ground, and perched in the trees, running up and down the thick owl tree branches chasing each other on foot(!) and perched on the fence, but almost always just that little bit too far for a good image, or just too obstructed by branches and leaves. We’ve even had them fly up in to one of the tree’s as we sat under it. We could hear it calling out from 15 feet above our head but we simply couldn’t see it! Oh yes, at times this can be very frustrating.

FIGHTING THE LIGHT

The biggest problem here though is that, due to the location, if you arrive for sunrise, you get about an hour to an hour and a half before the area slowly starts to populate with human traffic. And as such, the owls become less visible. But, if you try to work them at sunset, the human traffic can sometimes not die down until 20 minutes before sunset if it’s been a nice day. And as such, you get a very limited window for them to come out and perch up close, in view and in the light. And that’s why repeat visits are in order, because the more time you spend on location, the more chance of all the elements coming together whilst you are there. It’s been great fun trying so far, even though I’ve had to up the ISO at times (to 12,800! Thank you Nikon for the wonderful D3s!!) due to them being up in very thick dark trees…

TO BE CONTINUED…?

I’m not really sure what will happen once the young has fledged, which is likely to be soon as already in the last two weeks it’s gone from being heard only in the nesting tree, to this morning (the morning of the day I wrote this) being in several trees around it. Hopefully the adults will stay within the same territory once it’s fledged and as such I can continue to photograph them all year round on and off. Like anything, you have to put in the time, and if this is to become a long term project I’ll be more than happy with that. My only fear is they will fly off to a new home soon, and then I’ll have to start again from scratch or wait until next year and hope they return to the same area to nest again.

So watch this space…I’m really enjoying having a little project to work on between preparing for my up coming wedding, and if there are any further updates I’ll write about them and link to those write ups here. Like I said, my hope is I can give you a running commentary of sorts on my progress from these early days of high ISO obstructed and cropped shots, to what I hope will be some real decent stand out images. So, if you stumble across this article in a few months time and there are no links below to follow ups, you’ll know they moved on and I didn’t better anything posted above…

And don’t forget, again if you follow me on Twitter you’ll get to hear all about my experiences with the owls as they happen as I am always tweeting updates whilst I am out in the field with my camera. At at the time of writing this I’ve already got another three trips there planned over the next five days.

P.S. Thanks to David Lloyd and Jai Grieve, my shooting buddies on this project. They’ve kept me sane and amused when I’ve been running off 3 hours sleep during these early starts!