Well, hello there!
Image by Pim Stouten
We ‘caught’ this Spotted Eagle Owl during an evening game drive from Ntshondwe Camp in Ithala NP.
Standard accessory during such drives are a couple of powerful torches or spotlights to try and spot animals close to the road. That particular evening had a very good ‘score’: more than half a dozen of owls quite close up, a couple of nightjars, and black rhino with calf.
Spotting animals using lights isn’t too difficult, but taking pictures is…
There’s ample light for you to see the animal in detail, but it’s barely sufficient to take a decent picture.
Open safari vehicles mean you’re more or less limited to shoot hand-held, this one was shot wide open @ ISO 3200 (hence the pixel noise) and a shutter speed of 1/60s. Not bad, for hand-holding a body-lense combo of appr. 5kg (10lb)! Unaltered, uncropped image, no post-porcessing whatsoever.
For some silly reason the GPS coordinates recorded with this pic are way off (way too far to the southeast), I’ll try to fix that sometime.
This South Africa image was automatically curated and published with WP Robot plugin – CLICK HERE to learn more about WP Robot for WordPress – a massive time and money saver.
Visit the MyPE YouTube Channel.
