With a full moon tonight, I figured I'd post this one of a Snowy Owl perched on a pole with the rising moon passing behind him. It sort of gives him a saintly angelic look.

Taken on the eve of a full moon with frontal lighting from a setting sun almost on the horizon, these types of shots present many challenges. Of course, the bird and the moon have to be in the right spot, the moon has to be visible in the sky and you only have a few minutes to act.

Another big problem is depth-of-field in trying to get both the owl and moon in focus. Because I was using my 500mm lens with the bird close and almost full-framed, there was not enough depth-of-field to capture the moon in focus.

One way around this is to create a montage by taking a second shot of the moon in focus and combining the two images together.

Canon 7D with the 500L f4 lens handheld @ 1/400, f4, ISO 400, +2 1/3 exposure compensation.

Very slight crop to reduce the height of the sky above the owl and moon. This was not taken at noon, so I left the cool blue hue on the owl to reflect the time of day the image was taken.

The Snowy Owls will return to their homes in the arctic to mate towards the end of April.

Cheers,

Mike