As I am sure most of you are aware some owls come out at night, notably Tawny’s but Barn Owls are crepuscular, which for a photographer is tantalisingly close to getting a decent image, except it isn’t and its always going to be full of grain. There are all sorts of trickery available in the way of software to help to get rid of the grain and pushing one’s exposure compensation to the right is supposed to help, except it doesn’t for me because I am in manual, so I just head to the right a little depending on the shadows and what I am trying to create.  It becomes a juggle with speed, and ISO and F stops.. while the light changes from the moving  fluffy clouds and the sun setting,  my fingers are constantly twirling the buttons while I take test shots.

So if one can get the advantage over an owl, photographically speaking, it is going to be a huge bonus.  Generally speaking Owls won’t hunt in the rain for I believe two reasons, firstly their feathers are not waterproof and  they will get waterlogged and probably die and the second they can’t hear as well so can’t locate their prey.  So if its been raining heavily for a night and most of the day, its generally a good idea to go barn owl hunting when the rain stops on where you think that barn owl might be, luckily I knew just where that was. And sure enough, out popped this little beauty mid afternoon and there she stopped for a couple of hours..  
Eventually she came out for a bit of a stretch, most comical it was.

And a think. 

And then she was off in search of food. She didn’t come back until much later into the evening, probably having fed herself first, so the light was down to what it normally is. But it was very nice to get these images on a much lower ISO than is normally possible.