Photo of the Week 2017-01-30

Ontario Parks recently posted a great article on etiquette for nature photography to their Facebook page. I shared and posted the following to my Photography page:

"Great article from Ontario Parks that made me do a quick "gut check" on my practices when photographing. I never bait, work to maintain a suitable distance, never chase/follow wildlife, don't use recorded calls, don't destroy habitat ... but I admit I could improve by always sticking to the marked trails.
My wildlife and nature photos may not be as "impressive" as some of those from others ... but I'm OK with that. And I'll keep working in a responsible way to get better ones."

So this weekend, while up at my 'happy place', armed with some intel on the location of a male snowy owl (code named Popeye ;-), I headed out early Saturday morning making the drive to said location. Arriving just after sunrise on a very overcast day with intermittent snow squalls, I prowled the grid if rural concessions and side roads in search of my target. Driving with 3 cameras on the front passenger seat within reach should something catch my eye, also keeping an eye out for other cars approaching from behind, I edged over to stop and frequently scan the surrounding area with binoculars (a little more convenient that using the camera).

Only 40 minutes or so after arriving in the area, I spotted something white on top of a leaning utility pole up ahead at the edge of a narrow side road. Stopping the car, I grabbed a camera and zoomed in, Yup ! It was a male snowy. Zipping up my jacket and putting on hat & gloves, I grabbed some gear (spare battery too when it's cold) and got out to slowly approach, stopping to snap shots at various points.

Staying aware to maintain suitable distance from the owl in my eagerness to get a good image, I stopped to make the image below, which I call 'Q-Tip'

Q-Tip

The image was made at 400mm on my 7DII so he's still a good distance away. I had checked the frame on the camera LCD and was satisfied that I had at least one decent shot so I decided to stand and wait for a bit and observe the bird's behaviour. He remained settled in position, feathers ruffling with the wind, swivelling his head from side to side as they do while listening, hunting for prey. I waited a good 5 min without moving, then decided to move another 20m or so closer. I looked down to be sure of my footing on the icy road and when I looked back up he was in flight dropping down to skim across the field behind some bushes at the edge of a drainage ditch. I had no chance to catch him in flight but walked up to the pole where he had perched to have a look around. I managed to locate him again, far off, perched on a fence post out in the middle of the fields. I stayed and watched, just taking in another experience with these lovely birds.

The tech ...

Using high-end gear for photography has many benefits ... and it's not all about the megapixels. My 7DII has a 20.2 MP sensor, high by some standards but not others considering the 36,42 and 50 MP sensors available in the highest end DSLR/Mirrorless cameras these days. Still, the 7DII captures an file that can be cropped significantly and still provide a quality image. 'Q-Tip' as shown above is roughly a 90% crop (for compositional purposes) of the the original 20.2 MP image. To show the extreme crop possible with high quality images from this (and other high-end cameras), consider the image below, cropped from the already 90% image above. This is cropped to roughly 20% of the original (and then upscaled in Lightroom to 1200x1200 for web viewing) and still shows nice detail.

Q-Tip (crop)

DJE