Snowy Owl Sightings, January 2014
This is your year to photograph Snowy Owls since this is one of the best years ever for Snowy Owl sightings in the U.S., especially in the Northeast (map above). Snowy Owls are ranging much farther south than usual this winter.
This map at eBird.org will guide you to specific Snowy Owl sighting locations. Set the Date Range to “Year Around” and “Current Year” (or 2014). Pick a pick a purple area (the darker the better) nearest the location you plan to travel to to see Snow Owls and zoom in until you see the red location “pins”. Click on a pin for the specific location and sighting date.
Snowy Owl Sightings south of Kalamazoo-Portage Michigan
This closeup from the online map shows Snowy Owl sightings south of the Kalamazoo-Portage Michigan area. One of the red location pins has been selected to show the location and date of the sighting. All of these sightings were from January 8-14, 2014.
Equipment
Long lenses are the rule for photographing birds. 300-400mm or longer are preferred (35mm equivalent). If you don’t want to break the bank on a 300, 400, or 500mm prime (single focal length) lens, look at the 100-300mm, 100-400mm, 55-250mm and similar telephoto zoom lenses lenses that are available. Some of the superzoom point and shoot cameras have lenses that zoom out to 500mm and longer (35mm equivalent).
Exposure Tips
A white bird against a snowy white background is a recipe for underexposure if your camera is in auto exposure mode. With a white subject and a white background, some “plus exposure compensation” is in order, somewhere between +1 and +2. A white bird against a dark background is even trickier for auto exposure with the risk of a seriously overexposed bird. Best to switch to manual mode and meter an 18% gray card (info below), a neutral toned subject, or use an incident light meter.
Links
Snowy Owl sighting map at eBird.org
A series of articles on exposure begins here. The articles include information on allowing for different subject tonalities, exposure compensation, using an 18% gray card, and using an incident light meter.
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