Burrowing Owl, digging burrow. Cape Coral, Florida

-- Steve Kaufman (skphoto@xyz.net), June 10, 1999

Answers

More interesting than all the perfectly exposed, perfectly placed, perfect catch light, burrowing owl shots in the world.

-- Larry Korhnak (lvk@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu), June 10, 1999.

Steve,

Ahhh, a vertebrate. Now you're getting on track. Now forget the endotherms and work your way up to the ectos... The action is very nicely caught, but compositionally something bugs me about it (very slightly - I'd kill for a burrowing owl shot this nice). I tried playing with different cropping arrangements, though, and I can't come up with anything that looks better. Is this full frame, or have you already cropped? The blur of the flying sand is what really makes this shot special for me.

Now how about those snakes....

Peter

-- Peter May (peter.may@stetson.edu), June 10, 1999.

As Larry has indicated, this is a priceless shot of live action which I have never seen previously. That moving leg and spray of sand is great.

-- Garry Schaefer (schaefer@pangea.ca), June 10, 1999.

Love this picture. It is unique(never seen one in action before).

Steve

-- Yu-Cheng "aka. Steve" Kuan (ykuan@u.washington.edu), June 10, 1999.

A burrowing Burrowing Owl, what a concept! We need more shots like this, that put the "nature" back in nature photography. Good shot! Donna

-- Donna Bollenbach (cassidy@icubed.net), June 10, 1999.

The photo is displayed slightly smaller than full-frame (I cropped a little from each side). You wouldn't believe how many frames I shot to finally catch this action! Suffice it to say, out of a few hundred shots of the owl digging, only two images really "worked". I did also shoot lots of "portraits" with perfect catchlight in the eyes, but I'm always happier with an image showing some sort of behavior. For those interested, later today I'll be posting a group of images from our trip to the SE portion of the US at: http:www.xyz.net/~skphoto/ florida.html

-- Steve Kaufman (skphoto@xyz.net), June 10, 1999.

Steve, I have lived in Florida all of my life and I have never even seen a burrowing owl. It's a great catch! I don't see many photographic problems, either. Thanks for posting it!

-- Joe Cheatwood (cheatwoo@ufl.edu), June 11, 1999.