Northern Saw Whet Owl (Aegolius acadicus)

I had the great opportunity tonight to shoot some video of a tiny Northern Saw Whet Owl in Red Deer County thanks to Phil French and Jim Potter. Alexander and I headed out and we drove about half an hour SE of Red Deer onto a lease road as far as we could and then walked into the bush for a couple hundred meters to an old snag. Everyone was being very quiet as I set up the camera so as not to disturb the owl if at all possible. When all was set and ready to go, I started the camera and gave the sign that I was rolling. Jim rubbed a stick against the snag and almost immediately the owl poked her head out to see who was there. I shot about four minutes of video until the owl was satisfied we were not of any concern and hopped back into her hole. I packed everything back up and we left quietly and headed back to the vehicles after seeing an amazing little bird! This image is a still image grabbed off the video, so isn’t of very high resolution, but I wanted to share it.

[Olympus E-M5, Canon FD 800mm f/5.6]

HDV Stills – Piper Creek Evening

Took out the little HD video camera again the other night close to home along Piper Creek. This is definitely not the camera for me as it is just too hard to navigate the menus to get what I need for the image. I think the Canon XH-A1 will be much better in this regard as it has a great many more buttons on the camera and so requires far less menu cruising and more time shooting. More time shooting is definitely the direction that appeals to me.
[Canon HG10]

Sunset HD Video Stills

Last weekend we were up at my in-laws place just north of Spruce Grove, Alberta. I decided to take along a small HD Camcorder to put together a few images that I might have shot as still images to see if they might make a nice film clip. I pulled a few images as stills from the video that show the story of the sunset on Saturday evening over a period of half an hour. Of course I know virtually nothing about video editing and will try my hand at it once I figure out how to make it work and post a clip hopefully with some music to go with it in the future.
[Canon HG10]