flights of wonder

This is always a good show for photography if you've got a good long lens, even if it is a little corny in places. Besides which, I'm really impressed with some of the ways they have their birds trained.
Noteworthy pictures in what I'm posting include the one of the owl flying off the perch. They always get a few people with cameras to stand in the location of the two in the picture. I always hope that they pick me, but I never have a wide lens on my camera, and I'm guessing that I'd be too close to be able to focus on the owl with my 70-200 if they DID pick me. I wonder if they're aware of the distinction.. they always seem to pick people carrying P&S cameras. I wonder if they're at least avoiding people with long SLR lenses because they know they'd tend to have too long a minimum focus distance.
My mission for this show in December is to use a high enough shutter speed to get sharp pictures of the birds in flight. The parts of the routine where the birds fly over the audience seem to be good opportunities, but judging by the pictures that I got, the shade over the audience must darken the scene considerably, I was trying to track a flying bird with my lens zoomed out to 70mm with a 1/60thsec exposure. The resulting picture was interesting.. but closer to modern art than photography.

[This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]

 

Cool, thanks for the heads up. Ive always wanted to see this show but have never been able to. We will be there in January and i will check it out. I'll make sure i carry in my wide and long lens too.

 

Nice pix!
We love this show. I've never been able to get a decent shot of the owl flying over the audience, but they usually bring out an owl prior to the show and you can get some close-up shots then.

 

Well Ilene, you've got me totally outgunned. I took a bunch of shots of the owl during the preshow, and I just can't touch that first shot of yours. Here's the best I managed of the same species, perhaps the same bird.

[This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]

 

hehe! We all have pics of the same owl...

 

Those are great shots, Dan and Joe!
I love that you can see the crowd of people in the owl's eyes in all of these shots. I was amazed when I looked closely at the full-size image of my 2nd photo.

 

Great shots guys. I love the owl pics and the eagle. Thanks for sharing!

 

Heh, with the full head of hair behind it it kind of looks like that owl is sporting a pompadour.

I find that owl interesting. There's something about it that seems unusual, it's not what I typically think of when I think of an owl. I can't fully explain this, but it always looks sort of unreal to me. Even without a lush, full head of hair.

 

These are lovley shots Roger

 

Fun show- I got whacked in the head the one time I saw it. She said the bird flew with its 'landing gear down.'

Here are a few of mine (not as good as the others but I will share anyway. )