{"id":12832,"date":"2013-02-28T07:37:37","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T14:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=12832"},"modified":"2013-02-28T08:05:07","modified_gmt":"2013-02-28T15:05:07","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-lift-off-sequence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/28\/red-tailed-hawk-lift-off-sequence\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk Lift-off Sequence"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past fall\u00a0I spent several days photographing a couple of juvenile Red-tailed Hawks on Antelope Island.\u00a0 I suspect they were siblings as they seemed to enjoy each others company, though one of them was significantly\u00a0more skittish than the other.\u00a0 This one was the more cooperative of the two.<\/p>\n

I enjoy the challenge of lift-off sequences.\u00a0 I usually consider myself lucky if I can get 2-3 sharp shots with poses I like before losing focus on the bird but this time I did better than usual.<\/p>\n

There won’t be much “narration” here, just a series of images as the hawk took off after prey.\u00a0 Some of the shots are a little sharper than others but I like seeing the entire sequence –\u00a0“warts” and all. \u00a0 Techs for all these\u00a0images were identical – 1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Moment of lift-off.<\/p>\n

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I like the splayed feet.<\/p>\n

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Here the nictitating membrane is partially closed.<\/p>\n

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Compositionally the\u00a0left wing\u00a0is too tight at the top of this image.\u00a0 I could easily add canvas up there and I might.<\/p>\n

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I like how they splay their tail during the wing down-beat\u00a0at take-off.<\/p>\n

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Normally I do very little cloning but in this case\u00a0I’d probably remove the stem under the bird if I chose to print this image.<\/p>\n

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I did add a little canvas at the bottom of this shot.<\/p>\n

These last two\u00a0images are very similar but I include them to demonstrate something I see often when shooting raptors at lift-off.\u00a0 I’m often struck by how similar\u00a0sequential shots can be during take-off.\u00a0 The flight posture, body angle and light on the bird in this image…<\/p>\n

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is nearly identical to this shot taken two clicks later in the burst.\u00a0\u00a0It always surprises me\u00a0that this happens as often as it does during such a dynamic and athletic activity as take-off.<\/p>\n

Though I’ve presented 8 images in this sequence I was actually able to get 10 relatively sharp shots of this bird in flight before I lost focus and the bird was past me – one of my better performances in this situation.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

This past fall\u00a0I spent several days photographing a couple of juvenile Red-tailed Hawks on Antelope Island.\u00a0 I suspect they were siblings as they seemed to enjoy each others company, though one of them was significantly\u00a0more skittish than the other.\u00a0 This one was the more cooperative of the two. I enjoy the challenge of lift-off sequences.\u00a0 I usually consider myself lucky if I can get 2-3 sharp shots with poses I like before losing focus on the bird but this time I did better than usual. There won’t be much “narration” here, just a series of images as the hawk took off after prey.\u00a0 Some of the shots are a little sharper than others but I like seeing the entire sequence –\u00a0“warts” and all. \u00a0 Techs for all these\u00a0images were identical – 1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or\u00a0called in.\u00a0   Moment of lift-off.     I like the splayed feet.     Here the nictitating membrane is partially closed.     Compositionally the\u00a0left wing\u00a0is too tight at the top of this image.\u00a0 I could easily add canvas up there and I might.     I like how they splay their tail during the wing down-beat\u00a0at take-off.     Normally I do very little cloning but in this case\u00a0I’d probably remove the stem under the bird if I chose to print this image.     I did add a little canvas at the bottom of this shot. These last two\u00a0images are very similar but I include them to…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[3,334,450],"tags":[452,190,451,605],"class_list":["post-12832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-juvenile","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-take-off"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3kY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12832","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=12832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}