{"id":104352,"date":"2021-11-23T05:25:13","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T12:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=104352"},"modified":"2021-11-23T08:54:28","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T15:54:28","slug":"northern-harrier-takeoff-from-a-tumbleweed-perch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/23\/northern-harrier-takeoff-from-a-tumbleweed-perch\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Harrier Takeoff From A Tumbleweed Perch"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t been able to get any new harrier photos I like for a very long time but yesterday morning this one came through for me.<\/p>\n

Most of the morning was highly discouraging. This is the time of year, when it gets cold, that I often have trouble getting sharp shots in the early morning because of heat wave distortion<\/a><\/span><\/span> and I could tell by looking at my camera screen that most of my shots were moderately to grossly soft. I’d pretty much given up in frustration until just before I found this harrier when I finally got some sharp shots of a Song Sparrow.<\/p>\n

If that sparrow hadn’t been sharp I probably wouldn’t have even aimed my lens at the harrier. At that point I’d had more than enough frustration.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The adult female harrier was perched on a row of tumbleweeds and she wasn’t particularly close but I figured if I could get her taking off her wings might fill enough of the frame to make my efforts worthwhile. So I watched and waited and when she did take off I captured her in a takeoff posture I like very much. I’m glad that her shaded left wing is behind her head, otherwise I don’t think her face and eye would have stood out as well. I got other photos of her taking off and in flight but I like this one best.<\/p>\n

And much to my relief she was sharp, as were all of my shots of her. By that time of morning the difference in temperature between the ground and the air had mitigated enough so that I wasn’t shooting through air of different densities which causes lenses, especially super telephoto lenses, to have a lot of trouble getting sharp shots. Shooting through layers of ‘wavy’ air is a sure-fire way to get soft photos.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t the only photographer using a 500mm lens early yesterday morning that was having difficulty getting sharp shots so, knowing that, I wasn’t particularly concerned that my lens was malfunctioning.<\/p>\n

Back to the photo. I like pretty much everything about it except for that bright, out of focus, stem sticking up directly beneath the bird. Gotta have at least one nit to pick…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t been able to get any new harrier photos I like for a very long time but yesterday morning this one came through for me.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,341],"tags":[86,234,2738,2924,6028],"class_list":["post-104352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-northern-harrier","tag-takeoff","tag-tumbleweeds","tag-what-causes-heat-wave-distortion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/northern-harrier-9672-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-r96","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104352"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104384,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104352\/revisions\/104384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}