Snow and Snowy Owls

After spending the last day and a half recovering from a small cold, on Sunday, I promised Jan that I would take her to try to view the snowy owl.  We started out in bright sun and needing to where sunglasses as we were driving and approaching down to the coast near Plymouth, the skies became more overcast and there was snow falling.  And Duxbury, it was light snow covering portions of the ground and rolled and on the beach, there was wind and snow blowing.  Driving down the road, keeping our eyes open for the snowy owl, we first came across a pair of gulls fighting at the waters edge.  I stopped the car and got my camera out, however, they stopped fighting, but did interact and lead to a few interesting photographs.


After we started driving and looked backwards the gulls started fighting again.  I did not obtain any photographs of the fight.  We did not locate the owl on our trip down to the beginning of Gurnet.  There we met up with 2 other photographers, one who said he had seen the owl recently near the mud flats and said he would be happy to lead us to where it was.  We followed him down and came to where across the marsh, the owl was sitting with the snow blowing around it.  I wish to thank Mike for his kindness and showing us where the owl was located and furnishing Jan with her first look at a snowy owl.  She was impressed with the size of the owl.  I did obtain a few pictures, again having to hold my tripod and moved lens and camera very steady, because of the blowing wind.  To help me in this endeavor.  I did not extend the tripod up, but kept it low to the ground, just enough so it would be over the marsh grass and I kneeled in the small amount the snow that there was there.

Although, there wasn't a huge amount the snow, it did make for a nice winter scene of the snow on the dunes.
Because the day was so overcast and the light so diffuse, they were really wasn't much contrast in the photographs.  Always photographs were post processed in NIK software, Color Efex Pro 4 and VIVEZA.
In my next blog, I will show some photographs for and after using the NIK software.