{"id":19433,"date":"2013-10-22T05:55:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T11:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=19433"},"modified":"2013-10-22T06:33:37","modified_gmt":"2013-10-22T12:33:37","slug":"black-billed-magpie-in-full-flight-not-taking-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/22\/black-billed-magpie-in-full-flight-not-taking-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Black-billed Magpie In Full Flight (not taking off)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Magpies aren&#8217;t among the most glamorous of birds\u00a0so they don&#8217;t get a lot of attention from photographers but I enjoy them for their\u00a0fascinating behaviors, their gutsiness and their apparent intelligence.\u00a0 And if you want a particularly challenging photographic subject you can&#8217;t go wrong with the Black-billed Magpie.<\/p>\n<p>Two characteristics of magpies make them notoriously difficult to photograph well:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>they have a\u00a0maddening tendency to allow you to get close until the instant you pay them any attention and then they fly away.\u00a0 Aim a big lens at them and they&#8217;re gone.\u00a0 These birds were indiscriminately shot for centuries and they&#8217;re &#8220;smart&#8221; enough as a species to have learned some lessons well&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>the deep blacks combined with the bright whites of magpies\u00a0make them an exposure nightmare.\u00a0 If you expose to get detail in the blacks you usually blow out the whites.\u00a0 If you do the reverse there typically will be no detail in the blacks.\u00a0 You need just the right light and\u00a0a little luck to have a well-exposed magpie, especially in flight.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/black-billed-magpie-2089-ron-dudley.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"19434\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/22\/black-billed-magpie-in-full-flight-not-taking-off\/black-billed-magpie-2089-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/black-billed-magpie-2089-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,643\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;6.3&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;RON DUDLEY&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS 7D&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1301509369&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;700&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;500&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.000625&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"black-billed magpie 2089 ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/black-billed-magpie-2089-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19434\" alt=\"black-billed magpie 2089 ron dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/black-billed-magpie-2089-ron-dudley.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"643\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/black-billed-magpie-2089-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/black-billed-magpie-2089-ron-dudley-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/black-billed-magpie-2089-ron-dudley-150x107.jpg 150w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/black-billed-magpie-2089-ron-dudley-400x285.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I have a number of nice images of magpies taking off but getting one in full flight (feet tucked,\u00a0tail straight and flying at speed) has proven to be almost impossible for me.\u00a0\u00a0 The few sharp, full flight shots that had good\u00a0flight postures were\u00a0poorly exposed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This image is an exception.\u00a0 The sun was low enough to provide light and detail in the blacks\u00a0under the wings, the light was soft enough to not blow out the whites and the bird is even\u00a0sharp where it matters most.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">True, there&#8217;s no iridescence showing and the background is only blue sky.\u00a0 Maybe next time&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Magpies aren&#8217;t among the most glamorous of birds so they don&#8217;t get a lot of attention from photographers but I enjoy them for their fascinating behaviors, their gutsiness and their apparent intelligence.  And if you want a particularly challenging photographic subject you can&#8217;t go wrong with the Black-billed Magpie.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/22\/black-billed-magpie-in-full-flight-not-taking-off\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19434,"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":[3,334,363],"tags":[57,398,146,610],"class_list":["post-19433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-exposure","tag-flight","tag-pica-hudsonia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/black-billed-magpie-2089-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-53r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19433","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=19433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}