Nature Photography 104: Part 7: wakeup, shakeup and get movin...

To make a very long story short, I keep finding myself annoyed with nature photography. I was very worked up a few days ago, when I became quite confident that the winner of a fairly large photo contest must have edited/doctored the photo... I then look at said persons website, and found some very blatant editing along with large amounts of shameless self-promotion as a truly expert photographer. 

This really wasn't anything new, but I learned something from it: People can do whatever the heck they want, and I shouldn't care about it. If it bothers me, I can just focus on how I conduct myself and my photography! And with that said, I had the idea to reveal some of the work done on my own photos on my personal website. 

Are you ready for a look at everything you may or may not already know about nature photography? I'll post the website version first, followed by the totally un-edited original.

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Nature Photography 104: Part 7: wakeup, shakeup and get movin...

www.peregrineprints.com/zz_SEOW.htm

I started with the hot topic of owls in the last part (part 6), where I showed some photoshop stuff that didn’t take a lot of work, but changed the scene a fair bit. Today I’ll look at some of the dark underbelly of owl photography we all know and love.

Not much in the way of dramatic changes for this one. So what’s the deal? There’s no easy way to say it... But I simply walked out of the vehicle towards one of the most published SEOW spots in Ontario and got some of the owls up and flying. I was at a point where I was getting frustrated with seeing other photographers SEOW images, some of which were created with the same (miss-guided) technique, and just wanted to try it myself.

Not something I’m exactly proud of, and I let the birds fly around for a few minutes and comfortably return to their roost... Tried it once, took some photos, and have not done it again. I sort of think it is hard to develop good habits and practices without doing a few bad things in the learning process. My only excuse was being young and foolish! But anyways...

A late evening pic of a SEOW hunting some fallow grassland. Done 100% right, waiting by the road until sundown, SEOW’s emerge naturally, and try my best for photos. More of a “moody” shot, but certinatley a LOT more popular than the first image shown here...

A bit further away that I would like, but I was happy with the final result when cropped down and sharpened.

Not condoning this sort of behaviour, and can now preach that there are spectacular shots to be had by doing things the “right way”... But wanted to continue with the full-disclosure approach to these posts.