Near and Far

Gallery: AvianPosted March 26, 20161,160 views3 comments

I took off from work on Thursday as I had a number of things to take care of and wanted to take advantage of the long holiday weekend and the right photography conditions. This owl has nested (apparently for many years) in an old broken pier in a popular harbor. It's located a short walk from the entrance to a county park and is particularly accessible when the tide is low. A full moon low tide coincided with a sunrise which gave me the perfect excuse to go check it out. I had been to the spot once before to do a bit of scouting and knew I could shoot the bird from a few angles. With my tripod setup and recording a bit of video, I walked around checking different angles with my binoculars and discovered that from just the right spot, the nearly 200 year old lighthouse could been seen below the owl. Of course, this lighthouse being 2.25 miles away required me to blend two exposures but it was still a rather easy fix. In the future, I'm going to try and get a bit less sky so I can get show off water as well.

Nikon D7100 80-400mm VR @ 400mm on Gitzo
f/8 (f/22)
1/400s
ISO 640

Full frame, double blend for DOF

- Luke

P.S. You'll notice my personal "stamp" in the upper-right hand corner. This is a first for me as I got tired of just writing my name and instagram name - any feedback would be appreciated as it's a work in progress.

Comments

3 comments

Comment posted by John Launstein on March 26, 2016 at 11:18 PM

Awfully cool frame (and comp), Luke! Working backwards, you're "stamp" (watermark) looks fantastic! I'm aging too fast so couldn't cleanly read the type however (just a shade small for me--at least at low opacity). Great design.

On the image itself, the lighthouse is very cool and the placement is great and shows a lot of forethought. I love extreme horizon lines, but the rocky(?) foreground line at the very bottom might be better higher or not included altogether on future comps (i.e. cropping it out here crowds the lighthouse I think). When you have this kind of cool contrast and interest you just have to do something like you've done here, but for what it's worth, the owl is so hidden (in an awesome way) that I almost think in THIS case that's really the shot on it's own. Or rather, that it would be well worth your while to also ignore the background features and come up with something of just the structure and "hidden" owl, while ALSO perfect this fantastic idea. This is a very special shot as presented IMO and I have the feeling as you work with this remarkable opportunity you're going to hit on something absolutely spectacular.

Registered on April 5, 2011, 223 Posts, 1193 Comments

Comment posted by Jerry Austin on March 27, 2016 at 9:11 AM

Very interesting shot. I love it when photographers think outside the box. Kudos on even spotting the owl. Most people would have missed this opportunity for this interesting shot because they would have missed the owl.

Registered on January 6, 2012, 651 Posts, 3448 Comments

Comment posted by Richard Ditch on March 27, 2016 at 3:44 PM

Neat owl location. I've seen them in lots of unusual places but can't recall a pier like this.

For me, I'd prefer just the top half of the image, say from just below the color transition on the pilings. As presented, neither the owl nor the distant lighthouse is a strong enough subject.

Registered on November 1, 2003, 1031 Posts, 12705 Comments