Take a look at the picture above of a Little Owl (Athene noctua)
sitting on a rock and facing an almost full moon. What a stroke
of luck the photographer had in finding such a scene, you might
think. Well, not quite. In this first article in our series of
contributions about wildlife photography in Arabia, Hanne and
Jens Eriksen, award winning photographers presently based in the
Sultanate of Oman, explain how they achieved such a remarkable
image using simple techniques and genuine team-work.
The picture is an example of a double-exposure – two pictures
on the same frame. Not by accident, but by design.
We had been following a family of Little Owls near our home in
Muscat for several days. Two adults and five fully grown young
lived in a wadi with steep rocky sides. It was fairly easy to
get close to the owls and one afternoon we managed to get several
pictures. A typical one is also shown here, the one of the owl
sitting in the sunshine. We noticed that one of the owls often
favoured a particular rock. In the afternoon sunshine however
it was not possible to get a good picture as the terrain did not
permit us to position ourselves between the sun and the owl. It
then occurred to us that we could ‘construct’ an interesting image
as a double exposure. This is how it was done.
The first picture was taken with a Nikon Nikkor 500mm f4P lens.
The camera was a Nikon F4s which, like most modern cameras, allows
you to take a picture without advancing the film to the next frame
when a small lever on the camera is pulled. In order to give the
impression of night we underexposed the picture by three f stops,
so that the owl would just be a silhouette against the afternoon
sky. We carefully composed the picture so that the owl, which
was facing left on the rock, was positioned in the right hand
side of the frame. We then packed up our gear and left the area.
Several hours later in our own backyard we added the moon onto
the left side. The moon shot was taken with the 500mm lens fitted
with a Nikon 1.4 teleconverter, effectively producing a 700mm
f5.6 lens, thus giving a larger image of the moon and a more dramatic
picture. The exposure time was 14 second at f5.6. The moon could
probably have been sharper if we had locked up the camera mirror
beforehand. With the long exposure time even the slightest shaking
will blur the picture. A sturdy tripod was used for both exposures.
Is double exposure cheating? We don’t think so. On the contrary
it lets you create pictures that would otherwise be impossible.
It certainly would not be possible to get both the moon and the
owl in focus in a single exposure shot. This was indeed a joint
effort as one of us took the owl picture and the other added the
moon.