Red-tailed Hawk – Lookin’ Goofy

And how I responded to conflicting cues of true level when rotating this image to “apparent” level.

 

1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in

Sometimes when we’re photographing birds as they rouse we get some pretty goofy poses and I often enjoy seeing images like that because rousing is a behavior I’m interested in and besides, they often amuse me.

I photographed this juvenile Red-tailed Hawk one year ago today as it roused with enthusiasm and abandon and yup, it makes me smile. Every feather seems to be flying whichaway and even the tail is skewed at an unusual angle. It was such a vigorous shake that I was surprised there weren’t any small feathers flying off the bird, as often happens in situations like this.

  • Sharp eyes will notice a bit of lens flare (a lighter colored “blob”) above the tip of the right wing. Thankfully this phenomenon rarely occurs with my lens. It’s more prone to occur with zoom lenses and it would be easy to remove but for this post I’m not particularly concerned about it. Preventing lens flare is one of the primary reasons we use a lens hood.  

 

Ok, the rest of this post may only be of interest to photographers.

It was a bit of a challenge to rotate this image to apparent level and this version of the photo isn’t my final choice. It’s been rotated to make the fence wire level but I know it wasn’t and doing so made the light-colored bands in the background appear tilted clockwise. To me those bands are pretty dominant in the image and their tilted angle bothers me.

 

 

A looser experimental crop of the same image gave me another visual cue – the metal fence posts on either side of the hawk. This version of the photo was rotated to make the metal posts vertical (yes, it’s a leap of faith to assume that they really were…) which came quite close to leveling the colored bands . It also put the wire at an angle but I’m fine with that because I don’t believe it really was level.

So this is the rotation I decided on…

 

 

and a tighter crop of that same version (in order to lose the ugly metal posts) became my final choice. It’s a compromise between conflicting cues of apparent level but overall it’s the one I prefer. Others may have made a different choice and that’s ok.

After all, to varying degrees many photographs are only an interpretation of reality anyway.

Ron

 

 

37 Comments

  1. Late to the party but had to post tonight. Our Jeep Club took the Transcontinental Railroad run from Corinne to Wendover. I thought of you as we drove across the north and west end of the Salt Lake. We saw a photographer with a very large lense and my husband wondered if it might be you….that would have been so exciting!!!After being in this part of Utah for the first time, and driving along the railroad ties, it is amazing to think of the efforts the worker who built the railroads that joined in Utah went through.

    The photo of your red-tailed hawk remind me of some of my days. It is so refreshing to see your blog. Thank you for that.

  2. Windswept, tousled, goofy – whatever label we apply the bird is beautiful.
    And yes, I like your choice of image. As Laura says (and the red-tail knows, life IS messy.

  3. Fun pose and interesting post. Yes I often run into similar quandaries, I usually straighten for the horizon. The horizon is usually straight in life, unless the slope of a hillside. Posts, poles and fences are a given irregularity in my view.
    Beautiful morning, I hope you have wonderful birding today too!

  4. Thanks for the laugh…I really needed one this morning…

  5. It’s not unusual for a redtail to get that goofy look. After all, that majestic thing doesn’t always work and it takes a lot of energy to maintain it 24/7 🙂 But goofy doesn’t last long before they’re back to Bathing and preening require goofy, and when you can get it, that upside-down head thing mixes goofy with really cute. If you tell Mariah, Jack or even Skye that I used the word cute, I’ll deny it to my dying day. LOL!
    Gads but I love redtails (birds in general and critters)! That probably comes as a complete surprise to everybody here…LOL!

  6. I agree, these are fun images to look at! Goofy – every bird looks goofy after they shake and shake their feathers. Esthetics, I understand, are important for the public to appreciate. Even though the barbed wire is not level in the last shot, I like the shot. There is perspective in that shot, at least to my eye, even though the first shot shows everything is evened out.

  7. Very fun image. I think his talons are locked over one another which may be the only reason he didn’t land on his butt.

  8. Love this picture. Bet the preening was fun to watch ‼️
    Have a great day

  9. He seems to be shaking so vigorously that I’m surprised *he* didn’t come flying off that post! Thanks for a good giggle and a great lesson on being level headed…er…level eyed. (Having frequent bouts of vertigo, I’m not always sure which end is up.) 😉

    • Marty, I have a good friend who has bouts of vertigo and she really suffers from hers. I hope yours don’t happen often. And aren’t severe…

      • I’m fortunate that I usually can look at them as an “E Ticket Ride” from Disneyland. They also give me an excuse to break out my incredibly cool cane that I picked up at a Ren Faire. Three points mark a plane and all that.

  10. Great photo! I love the background coloration you have…your greens there are a much softer green than the harsh color we have. The sage and your other shrubs is the perfect color! On another note, I understand how you feel about the off-kilter horizon line…really bugs me! Your ‘fix’ worked.

    • Kathy, Sagebrush greens can look wonderful in soft, early light but in harsh light they’re often way too bright if the bird is exposed properly.

  11. Thanks for explaining the light colored bubbles that appear in photographs. I have had many folks tell me that they thought the blobs were other forms of being showing up at photography speeds, which we could not see because our eyes are not that fast. Yeah! I am glad to know the photographic explanation.

    • Those lens flare artifacts can be extremely annoying, Pam. Thankfully I rarely get them (but then I’m always using my lens hood and mine isn’t a zoom lens…).

  12. 6:30 in the morning===made ME laugh out loud ! Guy/gal look like somebody put him/her in a washing machine……..

  13. Looks like it had just had a bath and a good rub with a towel….:) “Level” certainly does become a relative thing out in nature! Also, no guarantee the posts are “vertical” for sure 😉 Background isn’t always helpful either. Old wooden post “works”.

  14. Talk about a bad feather day. Is the talon in the middle deformed or just placed at an odd angle?

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