The Making of "I can see what's in your soul"

How the winning photo of the "Best of 2021" contest was made

By Weevil in Photo Contests on Feb 27, 2022

"I can see what's in your soul..."

I am very honoured and grateful being voted - by photographers like me - as the winner of the PentaxForums' "Best of 2021" January 2022 contest. It is also an honor to be in the great company of all those nominated images in the contest; those were a delight to look at.

The story behind this image:

At the beginning of 2021 a Boreal Owl was often sighted in the Boucherville city parc, just south shore of Montreal, Quebec. There was a craze about that bird because it is very rare around the big city. I think the big crowds are also caused by the multiplication of wildlife photographers over the last decade not to mention the pandemic that restricted lots of other activities. Getting out to shoot was adopted by many additional enthusiasts who are very well connected to the social media.

This event was covered by the local media at the beginning of February 2021. Even though getting this beautiful owl in a picture would be a lifer for me, I wasn't really interested to join the crowd so I passed my turn (I took my image on another day than the event). The event is reported on here (sorry I can't find an English media reporting this. It's in French):

Des anateurs d'oiseaux qui dérangent
Quand l'ornithologie devient un zoo

After that event I saw so many pictures of that owl when browsing in the social media (FB, flickr, etc). It was indeed crazy, but it faded out a bit after a couple weeks.