Near miss

Barn owls are for me a waiting game. I have half a dozen possible sites but tend to rely on one or two. After a while patterns emerge and depending on wind direction , weather and time of year a degree of certainty emerges that they will fly at this or that site a certain times . This year in early April at a site five minutes down the road they are emerging just after 6pm. I park at a cross roads where two dykes cross , sit in the car and wait, usually at some time in the next hour or so they will fly over the crossing and I have five or six seconds to get my shots. The one shot I am after is of the owls flying low over the reeds , coming out of the setting sun, so far I have missed it though I have many shots of them fling the wrong way !. This shot was a near miss, had the bird been 30 feet to the left, job done so this is second best,

1D Mk 3,600mm, ISO 640, 500th/f5, tripod.

I like Bob, very pictorial and atmospheric.

Phil Newman

Really artistic shot, the muted colours suggest an owl hunting at night, so a bit different from from the norm. Very nice!

Really like the habitat shown here and the OOF foreground works well,nice light/shadow too

Excellent environmental image. I like the way you have captured the ghostly quality of the owl in flight, complemented by the ephemeral seed heads to the left foreground.

Agree with all the comments above, great shot

A near miss I would be extremely happy with Bob. Has a lovely ghostly feel to the image. Like it a lot.

I really like this to, really nice atmosphere, and the way the barn owl is lit up.


Mark.G

Lovely picture Bob, I agree with everything said so far.

For me, it conveys exactly the sense of anticipation and excitement you get when you position yourself awaiting a glimpse of 'the ghosts'. Very atmospheric.

Really nice Bob and showing an approach I've been wanting to see posted here for a while. There seems to be a run on barn owl shots at the minute but very few tell a story in the way this one does. It might be a near miss in terms of your intended shot but this a cracking image in its own right.
Good field craft resulting in a shot that could only be improved if the bird were a little further left. I'm splitting hairs, obviously.

Cheers,
Chris

A better 'near miss' than any Barn Owl images I have (zero!). Very nice Bob.