Keith's Odyssey to Planet Fitness: The owl sequence

You read about the canola trip that was photo-bombed by a steam train. That was fun, though I'm not a train chase kind of guy. Well, for this train I am. But that was only part of the day. We got a late lunch and carried on with the tour. We eat in all sorts of places, and this was another. Let's just say Carseland is in no danger of becoming a culinary destination.

I am constantly amazed at what my fellow roadies see along the way. Often they'll say, "there's a x over there", and then they talk about the details of what it is, or what it might be, down to individual feathers. Typically I don't have a clue where it is and see nothing. All this is happening as the van is zooming down the road. "There's an owl in that tree." The van slows a bit. "It's a great horned owl, shall we stop?" Usually that's a yes, and we all get out carefully so we have a chance. Usually the owl flies away.

Or it will be a critter in the bush, or canola, or in the ditch, or on the road, or beside the railway tracks. I think it's usually between 200 m and 1000 m away. I'd be a hopeless hunter gatherer.

So there we were, zooming along.

1. Someone spotted the owl in the barn when we were 'bring the van to a safe stop' distance away. We got out and took the first photos. This is with the 200mm lens. I didn't see the owl with my eyes at first, and then I thought it was a piece of wood sticking out. The others had better eyes and 500 or even 600mm lenses, so they can practically count feathers from here.

2. The owl promptly disappeared, flying out the other end of the shed into a grove of trees. There was no fence or a no trespassing sign, so we walked in to see if we could see the owl in the trees. I was a bit behind them, looking for a landscape or abandoned building photo, when I saw the owl flying out of the trees toward the shed. It flew directly over the other people, only a few feet over their heads. They heard nothing but saw me aiming the camera. None of them were able to catch it. I was fortunate enough to have focused the lens to about the distance to the owl, though it's slightly out of focus in these first two photos. The time stamp on the first one is 6:31:17.

3. Still 6:31:17

4. Now it's flying into the shed, and about here the owl disappeared, since it was fairly dark. I didn't care. I clicked the shutter button. 6:31:18.

5. 6:31:18

6. 6:31:20 It took me a second to change from 70mm to 200 mm and find focus again. This is not cropped, so you can tell how far away I was.

7. 6:31:20

Normally I'm about trying to get the face of whatever critter is posing, but those feathers in that light are just gorgeous! On the camera I could see just enough to know it was in focus, but could only hope in Lightroom I'd be able to brighten up the shadows a bit. And so I did, but not too much. I wanted it to look like I was aiming into a dark shed, and not that I had a search light shining in there. This is cropped in quite a bit to get the feather detail.