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Owl hunting

A Great Grey Owl listens for rodents under the snow while hunting from a thin aspen sapling

Great grey owl hunt­ing from thin aspen sapling

I’ve writ­ten about this image before, and I want­ed to print it today, as it’s got a very dis­tinct sep­a­ra­tion between the sharp, in-focus owl and the com­plete­ly blank sky where any grain or tex­ture is pure­ly an arti­fact of sen­sor noise and sharp­en­ing in post-pro­cess­ing. As I men­tioned yes­ter­day I tried the strat­e­gy of push­ing the clar­i­ty and sharp­en­ing as far as I think looked good on my mon­i­tor, before back­ing off a bit. Yes­ter­day the print came out look­ing real­ly good (although it had a slight green­ish cast that I hadn’t noticed on-screen), so I fig­ured I’d try it on a much less for­giv­ing pho­to today. We’ll see how it turns out…

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Warbler along mountain creek

A male Audubons Warbler watches for flying insects from his perch on a freshly budding willow sapling overhanging a small creek in Banff National Park, Alberta

Yel­low-rumped War­bler on bud­ding wil­low

I’ve always liked this pho­to­graph, and the mem­o­ry of the day that I took it (which often con­founds a photographer’s abil­i­ty to tell if a photo’s any good or not). I’ve even writ­ten a post about this image before (which you can read here). Even so, I’ve nev­er print­ed it, so I fig­ured this Dai­ly Print project was just the excuse I need­ed.

Bonus ques­tions for this post: +1 point if you can tell me the sex of the bird, +5 points for the sub­species, and +50 points if you can tell me the age (hint: click the image to view it full size, and remem­ber that this pho­to was tak­en in May…)

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Great Gray Owl hunting from thin aspen

A Great Grey Owl listens for rodents under the snow while hunting from a thin aspen sapling

Great grey owl hunt­ing from thin aspen sapling

The pho­tographs from my two pre­vi­ous posts were both tak­en while I was doing owl sur­veys and wait­ing for the sun to set (with cam­era at the ready, of course). So I thought I’d post an image of what we were out there look­ing for.

I don’t shoot a lot of wildlife, but I sim­ply could not resist fill­ing up a mem­o­ry card while watch­ing this owl hunt for rodents under the thick, spring snow. It was amaz­ing to watch him (or her, I’m not sure) lis­ten­ing from the tops of these small aspen trees before swoop­ing down and div­ing feet-first into the snow after his prey. I had the plea­sure of watch­ing from a dis­tance for over an hour before he final­ly gave up, or got full, and slow­ly moved off.

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Red-winged Blackbird flock

Red-winged blackbirds perch in the bare branches of early spring near Beaverhill Lake in Alberta

Black­bird flock in bare trees

I recent­ly received a request from a woman to use this pho­to­graph in a blog post she’s writ­ing, which gave me the great excuse to re-vis­it this image and to share it here (it hasn’t made it into the new web­site yet, but watch for it in the Birds sec­tion of my cat­a­logue, hope­ful­ly in the next few months).

I took this pho­to near the Beaver­hill Bird Obser­va­to­ry near Tofield, AB in the spring of 2007. At the time, I was exper­i­ment­ing with defo­cus­ing images, or por­tions there­of, for cre­ative effect. In this case, the orig­i­nal image was most­ly sharp, and I “paint­ed in” the blurred effect in post-pro­cess­ing. I was inspired to try this tech­nique by anoth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er who would cre­ate the same effect in the dark­room by spilling chem­i­cals over the dry­ing print and using a brush or sponge to blur the image.

It’s always fun to try new tech­niques, and although I haven’t tak­en many defo­cused pho­tographs late­ly, you can view a selec­tion of these images in my “Bore­al Impres­sions” port­fo­lio. I’d also rec­om­mend hav­ing a look at William Neill’s “Impres­sions of Light” port­fo­lio for more great blur­ry images that were an inspi­ra­tion to me (although he achieves the effect most­ly through long shut­ter speeds and cam­era move­ment, rather than man­u­al­ly defo­cus­ing the lens).

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Winter bison at Elk Island Park

Two bison brace against the cold on a winter day at Elk Island National Park

Rest­ing win­ter bison

It’s been a win­try cou­ple of days in the Edmon­ton area, but these bison don’t seem to mind it. I took this pho­to­graph out at Elk Island Park recent­ly, and I love how the fresh snow is just lying on top of the large bison. I had the good for­tune of being able to watch a small herd slow­ly mov­ing along and graz­ing through the snow for about an hour before they moved fur­ther off into the trees.

I made a lot of images of the herd, but I was sur­prised when I got home and could look at the pho­tos large on my com­put­er, how many times there were stray pieces of grass in front their faces—not nec­es­sar­i­ly ruin­ing the shot, but def­i­nite­ly dis­tract­ing. I guess it makes sense—the bison spent almost the entire time graz­ing with their heads just above the ground, and the dried grass was often over half a meter high. It’s just inter­est­ing how, while I was there, my brain could ignore the visu­al dis­trac­tions, but at home, the light yel­low-brown slash­es against the deep, dark brown real­ly stood out. Some­thing to watch for next time…

P.S. I hope you like the “new and improved” larg­er in-post images start­ing with this entry. As always, you can click an image to view it full-screen. Enjoy!

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $

Trumpeter Swans at Ministik Lake

A Trumpeter Swan floats with a raft of ducks on Bray at the Ministik Lake Game Bird Sanctuary

Trum­peter Swan at Min­is­tik Lake

A pair of Trumpeter Swans float with a raft of ducks on Bray Lake at the Ministik Lake Game Bird Sanctuary

Trum­peter Swan Pair at Min­is­tik Lake

I was walk­ing the Waska­he­gan Trail though the Min­is­tik Lake Game Bird Sanc­tu­ary a cou­ple days ago (Oct 5th, to be pre­cise), and came across this pair of swans. While it’s fair­ly com­mon to see migrat­ing Tun­dra Swans fly­ing (and honk­ing) over­head in flocks this time of year, I am pret­ty sure these are the much less com­mon Trum­peter Swan—but I would real­ly appre­ci­ate if some­one more famil­iar with Trum­peters could con­firm (or con­test) my ID. These two birds were on Bray Lake, right in the mid­dle of the sanc­tu­ary, and were there when I first passed the lake, and still there lat­er in the after­noon on my way back. This is what I love about Ministik—there’s always some­thing new to see, you just have to get out there and look for it.

Flock of waterfowl at Ministik

A flock of ducks flies up from Oliver Lake on an autumn evening at the Ministik Lake Bird Sanctuary

Water­fowl ris­ing from Min­is­tik Lake

Here’s anoth­er pho­to­graph I made last week, along Oliv­er Lake out at the Min­is­tik Lake Game­bird Sanc­tu­ary. As the sun was set­ting, hun­dreds (if not thou­sands) of ducks were set­tling on the lake, ris­ing in large flocks if unnamed pho­tog­ra­phers (or their dog) moved too quick­ly. I nor­mal­ly try hard when pro­cess­ing a pho­to­graph to make sure that there is detail in both the high­lights and shad­ow. In this case how­ev­er, I found that push­ing the bright­ness up real­ly did a bet­ter job of cap­tur­ing the mood of look­ing west across the lake into the sun, watch­ing the birds against the bril­liant, back­lit fall colours. They say the rules are there to be bro­ken, right?

A folio print of this image is for sale for whatever price you think is fair. Enter amount: $