{"id":16026,"date":"2013-06-11T05:01:34","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T11:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=16026"},"modified":"2013-06-11T05:01:34","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T11:01:34","slug":"chasing-the-light-for-a-swainsons-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/11\/chasing-the-light-for-a-swainsons-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"Chasing The Light For A Swainson’s Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mia and I often joke with each other that we’d make terrible landscape photographers because we’d be bored by all the waiting around for ideal conditions such as dramatic clouds and perfect light.\u00a0 We much prefer the excitement, unpredictability and the occasional and unexpected delights of bird photography.\u00a0 One of the clich\u00e9s applied to landscape photographers is that they are always “chasing the light”.<\/p>\n

But for the first two days of our recent Montana trip that’s exactly what we were doing.\u00a0 Conditions were largely cloudy and we would only occasionally get a fleeting break in the clouds.\u00a0 When we’d see some light off in the distance I’d often quickly drive toward it hoping for birds but that approach seldom worked.<\/p>\n

At one point we referred to the beginning of this trip as\u00a0our “Chasing the Light Tour” – like wannabe rock stars I guess…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainsons<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/800, f\/5.6, ISO 800, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But at least one time our strategy paid off and I was able to approach this Swainson’s Hawk on a post with a momentary\u00a0spot of light on it and a mostly dark background.\u00a0 With the fluffed up feathers it looks like it was rousing but it actually held this pose for quite a while.<\/p>\n

I used my tc for a few shots to\u00a0get better detail but I don’t like my ISO to be as high as 800 and I was uncomfortable with the low shutter speed\u00a0if the bird took off so I removed the tc…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"swainson's<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1000, f\/4.5, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

which allowed me to set my aperture at 4.5 and get some more shutter speed.\u00a0 The hawk took off mostly toward me and I liked the results despite the unnatural perch.<\/p>\n

Thankfully we had great light for the last three days of the trip.\u00a0 Chasing the light may work for some but it’s just not my cup of tea…<\/p>\n

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

Mia and I often joke with each other that we’d make terrible landscape photographers because we’d be bored by all the waiting around for ideal conditions such as dramatic clouds and perfect light. We much prefer the excitement, unpredictability and the occasional and unexpected delights of bird photography. This Swainson’s Hawk was one of those nice surprises. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16027,"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":[6,334,1493,645],"tags":[33,647,1500,187,1499,220,1501,282,646],"class_list":["post-16026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-aperture","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-chasing-the-light","tag-iso","tag-landscape-photography","tag-montana-2","tag-rousing","tag-shutter-speed","tag-swainsons-hawk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/swainsons-hawk-3915-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4au","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16026","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=16026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}