It is a winter afternoon in early September and a Short-eared Owl (Asio flammeus) makes a spectacular flight to perch on a pole in front of a pasture. How is this type of photograph taken?
I have just started my afternoon in the field and I have been working with this beautiful raptor for a few days now, I place myself in a strategic point in front of this beautiful “patch” of grassland and I immediately see it leaving from the ground. It makes several flights in different directions, while the chimangos (Milvago chimango) constantly harass it, until it decides to fly diagonally towards my position and I sense that it will perch on a stick.
In nature photography you have to have previous knowledge and try to anticipate the animal's behavior, every movement is important and you don't know if you will have the opportunity to photograph it again in the next days, months or years.
Shooting data are 1/3200 s at f/8, ISO 1000, with a Sony Alpha 6600 camera, and a Sony FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS telephoto lens.
Although it is a time when the light is “hard”, I take advantage of the situation to use a shutter speed of 1/3200 s so as not to shake the owl's movement and to have a correct exposure. The f/8 helps me control the light coming into the camera and make sure the bird is in full focus. The depth of field does not bother me, because if I had positioned myself at the height of the grassland to have the “background out of focus”, it would have affected the behavior of the animal. The photo was taken without a tripod, freehand.
There are details of the composition that are important: the main subject must move across the image, in this case from right to left, leaving air in the direction it is looking and where it is flying to perch.
Although it seems like an easy image to make, you have to keep in mind that the short-eared owl flies at a pace that is neither too fast nor too slow, so I have to be quick to think about what is going to happen and what image I want to take. In a few seconds I move and set up the camera to document the right moment.
The previous study of the species and the time spent in the field are fundamental to take these photographs.