Barn Owl Star Trail - Lucky capture or unwanted visitor??

lewis.arrand

lewis.arrand

Messages
52
Name
Lewis.
Edit My Images
Yes
Evening all;

Made a last minute decision and hit a spell between cloud cover to see some stars. Not my best work and a FlyBe landing at Robin Hood airport crashed the party. Putting the photo together however I noticed I caught the home owner of my subject. Barn owl? Im guessing by the creamy tones; bit unusual so thought id share.

Some q's for 'feedback'..
I had a play at light painting the box but found i literally had to flash the torch on and off for no longer than 3-4 seconds to avoid over exposure. Is this the general technique?
With this in mind; why then do we buy high powered led torches surely these are bound to over expose?

Thanks for looking (y)


Barn Owl Star Trail by lewisarrand, on Flickr
 
Last edited:
I like that a lot but I would loose the prominent aircraft trail as it detracts from the image...just clone it out of the single file or if near the start/end just loose those few exposures, as to the light painting you should only need to do it for the minimum amount of time, you should not be looking to do it for a long time at all the whole point of powerful torches is to get your light painting done quickly and accurately all the more important in this location...it's worth taking into consideration that barn owls I'm fairly sure is a protected (scheduled bird) some of the twitchers would be able to confirm and getting to close at the wrong time of the year can get you in hot water so even more reason to keep light painting to the very minimum...I love that the resident of the box can be seen an truth be told if there were a single frame where it were still in frame I'd seriously be tempted to put that up on its own, or do editing trickery to have it in frame clear with the star trails still

Matt
 
sorry for my ignorance, how was this done ??

i really like it, if anything i dont think the owl adds to the shot, just my opinion, but something about the static almost 3d bird house amongst a flurry or movement behind.

my screen isn't the best so cant say anything about exposure/focus ect.

id be over the moon if i came home with anything close to this
 
Thankyou very much Matthew; hope you've got the chip of the old block feeling as you set me off on this star trail business! Some more good ideas for me to play with - I'm very lucky that the box stands contained in our own land and have had a nesting pair for the past 3/4 years now it will probably be my last 'interference' so not to put them off. Thankyou though and likewise Scott - check out the tutorial sections or follow some of the posts by Matt above
 
lewis.arrand said:
Thankyou very much Matthew; hope you've got the chip of the old block feeling as you set me off on this star trail business! Some more good ideas for me to play with - I'm very lucky that the box stands contained in our own land and have had a nesting pair for the past 3/4 years now it will probably be my last 'interference' so not to put them off. Thankyou though and likewise Scott - check out the tutorial sections or follow some of the posts by Matt above
Click to expand...

Very kind of you Lewis personally I doubt you'd scare them off, well not with bloody great planes (actually it BE lets not go mad) planes passing over head a little bit of torch shouldn't bother them, but always best to air on the side of caution...I should add its great to see you developing your love of star trails

@scott199 if you check out my signature there is a link to my guide to star trails I'd be more than happy to offer any help you may need there answering questions on the style/genre rather than hijack Lewis's thread (y)
 
Edit: on further inspection the little critter is seen in a good 9-10 shots; must have been sat watching for longer than i thought.
 
Last edited:
Looks like you've caught a very faint pass of a satellite in all three of those exposures too (y) I love the first what a shame it was static for the full exposure, I'd sorely be tempt to go back just on more time running higher ISO shorter exposures just to try and get a shot with it stood still on the roof for say 10 seconds, probably wouldn't happen but it would look amazing :D well to me
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top