Lift-Off!
Kazakhstan 2016
The man earns his living by having his owl fly to amuse tourists. Most of the time, the owl sat in state on his little perch that looked like a tree branch. I didn’t see anyone pay to have the owl fly, but everyone got a photo of him with their cell phone.
Our tour leader hired the man to fly his owl for us. Oh, the poor owl. Take after take, as they say in Hollywood. In no time the owl was panting for breath, holding out his wings to cool himself down. It was over, whether we had gotten our shot or not.
You might ask me why I didn’t zoom in and get a tighter shot of the owl. Well, it was hard to know just where the owl would fly after he was released. And the whole thing lasted only seconds. If you didn’t have the owl in your viewfinder, you might as well forget it. Because I had a 22 megapixel camera, I was counting on cropping. And I like the crenelated parapet. It gives a sense of place. That’s a good thing.