Wildlife Photography | Snowy Owl Irruption in NYS

I first blogged about the snowy owls that have been showing up all over the state, and country, this year back in early Dec (here). I have gone out a couple more times to various locations to find more over the last couple weeks with no luck.

Until yesterday.

I put the above image out on my different social media platforms yesterday as a sneak peek and asked people where they thought I photographed the owl (snow-laden farm field, the bank of a frozen lake?) and had some really good guesses from different readers.

Much of photography is all about composition.

When I photographed the owls in Dec., I had found them at the local airport and it was really hard to make it seem like I wasn’t having this intimate connection in such an urban setting.

This time, I found her in…

The same urban, airport setting! GAH!

That’s right. She’s not poised on some snow-covered sandy dune, not on rural farm land…and I didn’t make it up to the arctic circle this weekend. I photographed her at the airport, AGAIN, on top of the roof of a building (the state trooper barracks to be exact). And for my photog-nerd friends, I totally photographed the above shot of her flying on manual focus…I deserve a pat on the back 😉

I wanted to lose the busy feel of the airport so I tried to frame the photos in a way that still kept the moment wild.

I think she’s doing the Tim-Tebow-move here above. Yeah, she’s a little behind the times but cut her some slack, she’s been in the arctic.

The distortion in the foreground is a pine tree I am shooting through.

I don’t like to do a lot of PhotoShop’ing and rarely use it (and frankly am no where good enough to even pull it off)…so I do the best I can in camera to make a shot work. An example of such are these snowy owl photos. As a photographer, you often have to think outside the box and learn how to see things differently than how they actually are. In this case, I hoped the viewer didn’t see the urban setting and didn’t want the busy, bustling airport to distract from that wise ol’ owl 🙂