Photoshoot @ the Bird Of Prey Center

(Southern?) White Faced Owl


Tawny Owl

The Bird Of Prey Center is located a good hour and a half away from London, the first hour by rail, and the next half by cab. The annoying amount of travel ends in a wonderful day of shooting with wildlife up close. The first half of the day was spent shooting static wildlife with relatively tame birds put in seemingly natural conditions (on a tree stump, inside a tree stump, on a barn etc). It's quite a change in mindset when you can use a 70mm instead of a 300mm lens :)

That said, nothing beats the feel of the dof (or lack of) with a 300mm/4 + a 1.4x teleconverter.


Barn Owl, 300mm/4 + TC14EII


Tawny Owl, 70-200VR

It was good times, though I wished there were an Eagle Owl available for shooting up close :)

The rest of the day was spent shooting various other trained birds flown by a falconer. This was the highlight of the day, to get some nice bird in flight shots.


Tawny owl in flight.

Having tried BIF long ways back, I knew that shooting head on, at least with my lenses and camera, would be an utter waste of time. In addition, the background for the head on shots wasn't too appealing. I went mainly for the panning shots that would be easier to get keepers.


Buzzard in flight

Optimally, it would be best to get as low as possible to get shots that are eye to eye with the bird. I was doing my best on my knees. Trying a few shots from a prone position was very difficult to pan the camera, so I went back to kneeling.


Golden Eagle landing

The golden eagle being flown was probably the easiest of the bunch to shoot; it seemed to enjoy floating with the winds, so there were occasions it was possible to actually compose the shot. Still, it was recommended that we shoot at 1/1500, and I had no choice but to increase my iso up to 1600!!! Thankfully the D200 does reasonably well at such high iso in broad daylight. Noise is definitely present, but a noisy shot is much better than a blurry one.

Halfway through the bif session, we stopped to watch the african birds display, had a bunch of birds like vultures, a secretary bird and horn bills grace us with their presence.


Secretary Bird - beautiful!

At the end of the day, I was worn out and happy. Another place to re-visit :)