There are countless burrowing owls that live within a few miles of my apartment. But despite my many drives through the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, I’ve not been able to spot one in amongst the prairie dog holes that cover the area. This handsome man, perched a little higher than you’d normally find him, is an ambassador in training at the Denver Zoo, learning how to engage and educate visitors on conservation issues.
I happened to catch one of these training demos that just so happened to be in perfect light. I was way up close, near the minimum object distance for the Tamron 150-600, but still zoomed in at 600mm. That close, even stopped down to f/7.1 for a bit of extra sharpness, I still got those beautiful out of focus spots from the sunlight wafting through the trees.
Friend of the blog, ZooPhotoTips, made a recent post talking about how great clean glass is. The only thing better than clean glass at the zoo is no glass, and these training demonstrations are a great opportunity to get really good clear images, even if you don’t have a big supertelephoto. A similar shot could have been made with any 50ish-200ish kit lens or a decent 70-300 step-up telephoto.
The Zootographer 