Tag: catch light

Winter Barn Owls In Flight

Normally it’s very difficult to find Barn Owls hunting in daylight but an extremely cold winter a few years ago caused some of them around here to continue hunting into mid-morning.  They were looking for voles in the wetlands and it was fascinating to watch and photograph them as they effortlessly cruised over the phragmites and grasses, occasionally turning abruptly and diving for prey.   1/2000, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in It was very cold and frosty with lots of moisture in the air which turned the sky background a color that appeals to me.     1/2000, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in Sometimes they were low enough to get the Phragmites in the setting.  Phragmites is a scourge to wetland managers but I’ve always liked it for backgrounds. When the owls would fly west I would often get light on the entire  bird.     1/2000, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in But when they flew east they were sidelit.  I like both effects.     1/3200, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in Partly because of their deeply set eyes it’s a challenge to get catch lights in Barn Owls.  But here the bird was hovering over prey and looking down at it so because of the behavior you wouldn’t expect to get…

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Barn Owl In Flight

Despite the simple gray background this is one of my favorite shots of a Barn Owl in flight.    1/2000, f/8, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc Getting a catch light in a Barn Owl in flight is no easy task due to their reluctance to fly in good light and their deeply set eyes.  This is one of my few shots where the early morning sun was low enough and its angle on the bird’s eye was just right to provide not only light in the eye but a good strong catch light.  The presence or absence of a catch light can make or break an image and I’m very glad I got one here. Ron    

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Peregrine Falcon Feeding Behavior (graphic)

The Peregrine Falcon has always been a nemesis bird for me.  I’ve occasionally seen them far off, either in flight or perched, but have never been able to get close to one.  All that changed last week when I spent an incredible half hour very close to a young bird while it was feeding on a female Northern Shoveler.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that there was no LIGHT!  DAMMITALL!  It was heavily overcast with only a bright spot in the clouds to mark the position of the sun.   As usual, this kind of situation requires lots of compromises between shutter speed, ISO, depth of field, motion blur, catch lights, ad infinitum…  So compromise I did but I still got many feeding behavior images I find interesting.  And since one of the primary focuses of this blog is bird behaviors, you guessed it – a blog post…  First – a warning.  Some of these photos are graphic.  Proceed with caution if your sensitivities are fragile.     1/250, f/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc As I first approached this falcon it was depluming the duck.  At times feathers were flying everywhere but at these shutter speeds and apertures many of those shots ended up in the delete bin.  At this point I was still using the 1.4 teleconverter but the bird soon let me approach close enough that I was able to ditch the tc and get slightly more shutter speed. Take visual note of the size of the crop in this image when the falcon has just begun…

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Catch Lights in Bird Photography

Broadly defined, a catch light in photography is a reflection of a light source in the eye of a subject.  In bird photography, that light source is often the sun and typically appears on the shiny, wet cornea of the bird as a single point reflection.   However, as we will see, there are variations on that theme.   Catch lights are highly desirable, to the point that many avian photographers simply delete virtually all photos that don’t have them (a painful process, to be sure).   Others resort to artificially cloning them into the eye when they don’t appear naturally – a practice that I find distasteful, even dishonest for a nature photographer (that said, I’m not adverse to running an extra round of sharpening or a Levels adjustment to enhance a subtle catch light that already exists). Natural catch lights that are a direct reflection of  the sun will appear in the upper half of the eye, usually from the 10 o’clock  to the 2 o’clock position, depending on the angle and position of the sun behind the photographer.  If the sun is behind the bird (back light) or too high in the sky, that kind of catch light will not be produced.     Without “light in the eye”, viewers perceive the eye to be lifeless, “dead” or even evil.  For this reason, cinematographers often deliberately eliminate catch lights on “the bad guys” in movies and television.   There is almost no difference between the two American Kestrel images above except for the slight head turn in the first shot that allows light from the sun…

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