Light like this very rarely occurs in bird photography that doesn’t involve setups or some other kind of manipulation, especially when the subject is a wild Prairie Falcon.
This photo is on the short list of my favorite shots of all time, partly because of its high degree of difficulty but certainly not limited to that. But the version I’ve posted in the past needed some tweaking.
High perches are unusual in the flat bottomland expanses of Montana’s huge Centennial Valley so the few that exist can be a draw for raptors and other birds.
Catch lights are highly desirable, to the point that many bird photographers simply delete any photo that doesn’t have them (a painful process, to be sure).
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