The Perfect Shot: A Father-Son Adventure

Hello Everyone,

My apologies for missing fun fact Friday but I wasn’t feeling my best and decided to rest. My medication takes a bit to take into effect but I am definitely looking forward to feeling a bit better soon. This week I want to share a great story about this stunning picture I was able to capture. This photo makes me so happy mostly because it shows how far I’ve come in my photography. Every shot i’ve captured I will always say is my favorite but there are some where I feel rewarded for my hard work. Here is the reflection of my passion and my hard work in one.

My son has been enjoying going out with me and exploring with me as of late. He started off having a lot of fun looking at birds and learning about them but eventually he started to get bored. I remember I had my old camera which I used to use when I started. So when he got out of school as a reward for his hard work I gave him that camera. Now he loves going for hikes as he says he gets to practice. The week of my infusion he ask me to take him out in the afternoon on Tuesday because he was bored. So I told him to get ready and that I would grab his camera bag. We headed out on the way to the sanctuary trail by my house as I wanted to go see if we can spot Luna. We been going to hike there a lot as of late mostly because we hadn’t really seen Luna. It had been about 3 months since we had last seen her. When we got to the park we got our gear and headed towards the trail. I remember looking at my son and asking him what animals or birds is he looking forward to seeing. He said I really want to see Luna and I remember telling him well I feel good about today maybe we will see her. We started walking and saw a couple baby blue jays that had just fletched. We were on a mission to get to the entrance of the sanctuary as we had always run into her there. After about a mile of walking we got to the trail that led to the entrance. As we were getting close we started hearing a screeching sound. My son got spooked but I assure him that it was probably a bird we hadn’t seen before. We started to get to the bridge that leads us to the sanctuary and we heard the screeching get louder like it was close. I look up and there he was a baby barred owl. It was this moment when we saw a big bird flying through the trees with a mouse in its beak and there she was Luna. She perched on the branch where the baby owl was and gave it its dinner. She looked at us and flew away. What a surreal moment my son was so excited this moments are truly beautiful to see. We took a couple of shots and started to walk back to the car.

On our way back to the car we started to plan our next adventure and we both agree to come back the day before my infusion to get pictures so I had some to edit. It was during this hike where this shot came to be. On this day similar the previous we got to the trail but this time we didn’t hear a sound. As I looked up there was no baby there. We started to get discouraged but we continued into the sanctuary trail. We were about to get to the lake that’s there when we heard it. A loud sound we were already familiar with from the previous visit. I started to try and pin point where the sound was coming from and there it was the baby owl. We started to capture our photos and he even flew around trees and we were able to get different angles. He pose for us more then we could have honestly ask for and so I knew I needed to make sure I was nailing this shots. Sometimes the best photos are taken when you have the time and know your camera well enough to know you are going to nail it. The first photos I got that Tuesdays were ok but they were missing something but didn’t know exactly what I had done wrong. So I went on YouTube and a new video had just been uploaded from Simon d’Entremont (https://www.youtube.com/@simon_dentremont/videos). In the video he was talking about spot metering and boy did this help. So if you are interested in learning photography please do me a favor and check out his videos. Your photos will get better just look at my work and you can see how far i’ve come.

So what in this video help me get this shot? I had always seen that setting for metering in my camera but never fully knew what it did. I highly recommend you watch this video because this setting was a game changer for me. I also learn about exposure compensation that same day I learn about metering as they kind of go hand in hand so please watch both of his videos to learn more. I am not a great teacher but what I can share is my settings so you can kind of understand why I did what I did. My focal length was set at 400mm. We were quite a distance away at first when we saw him on the branch and I wanted to get a close up shot as I wanted some of the details in the face and feathers to show in more detail after editing. My shutter speed was set a 1/125 this was the fastest shutter speed I could get as there was very little amount of light and I didn’t want my ISO set to high as I wanted to avoid noise on my picture. My aperture was set at f5.6 that’s the lowest I could set it to as I was at 400mm. If my lens would allow me to be at 4.5 or 4 that would have helped me even more. My ISO was set at 800 I don’t like to set my ISO any higher then that because my camera for some reason once I past 1600 ISO it makes my pictures so grainy and I don’t like that. I had my exposure set to -2/3 and I put my metering setting in spot metering as I wanted the owl to be the only thing my camera metered light for. When editing I just made sure to turn down the highlights and up my contrast a bit. I made sure the shadows were up and my blacks as well. I always use the histogram to make sure I am not clipping any colors.

I hope you have enjoyed I have some more stunning photos to share specially one my son took. He captured a beautiful photo that I will be sharing on Friday. Until then I hope everyone has a great week.