09/09/2026
What are the odds of a Great Horned Owl landing on your backyard fence and staring right at you through your patio door? To up the ante what are the odds of A Great Horned Owl landing in the same spot four years ago? Yes it happened (that photo in comments). If I were a betting girl, I’d have made some decent money!
Now for the back story of this photo taken last night.
Six short days ago I had reconstructive surgery on my right hand called Carpometacarpal Joint Arthroplasty with tendon interposition (Google it!) A very necessary surgery but as an artist and photographer, a jail sentence! My hand is in a cast right now, so the idea of picking up a camera is a far stretch from realistic.
Yesterday evening at around 7:20, my husband Randy quietly mentioned to me that he thought there was an owl sitting on our back fence. Out here in Arizona, 7:20 equates to almost total darkness considering sunset is at 6:46. Took a quick look outside through our patio door and sure enough we could vaguely see an owl sitting on that back fence and looking straight at us.
My camera is always on our kitchen counter, at the ready for cool stuff like this, but for a split second I hesitated to pick it up since I only have one free hand.
“Randy! Hand me my camera and take off the lens cap!” He knows when I'm on a mission to capture something incredible, nothing stands in my way! He abides by my orders and gently hands me my camera into my left hand and waits for my next command. I need to preface what happens next with the fact that my camera plus my zoom lens weigh almost 5 lbs. Normally a little bit bulky with two hands let alone using just my non dominant hand. I'm able to switch on my camera but now realize that two hands are absolutely necessary to adjust the settings and the lens, to focus on this amazing owl.
“Randy, press this button (necessary to adjust the all-important ISO which lets more light into the camera) and hold the camera to my face while I adjust the lens, shutter speed and aperture!” I know I’m getting technical here for those that are not photographers, but these movements normally happen within a split second with my two hands. So here we are fighting against time and gravity trying to make this camera work to get this shot.
Randy slowly and quietly slides open the patio door and that owl sat there staring at our follies as if we were there for her entertainment. Due to the darkness and the camera settings, I know this is an impossible shot. For those who know photography, my camera is now set at 1/80 sec, f/7.1, ISO 6400 (google it!). At these settings I am sure to get a blurred photo, either by camera shake or movement of the bird. The darkness caused my camera to not find anything to focus on, so I slowed my breathing, had Randy do his best to hold the camera still, and found the white outline of the owl against the dark background to focus on (another nearly impossible feat under the circumstances). With my camera set at high-speed continuous shooting mode, 33 photos later, all I could see were almost black looking photos on the back of my camera.
Normally, I wait until morning to upload photos into my computer since I know photo editing at night can definitely get in the way of a good night's sleep. Not tonight!
Load the photos into my trusty Adobe Lightroom photo editing software on my computer, and just as I saw on the back of my camera, 33 almost black photos. These days, photo editing is so much less cumbersome and so much more intuitive. With a quick slide of the exposure adjustment, the shadow adjustment, a powerful denoise tool, and a few other trusty editing tools, this beautiful owl image is everything to me.
You have now entered the world of a person who has an insurmountable passion for photography. At all costs... get the shot!
