1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nI photographed this Red-tailed Hawk two weeks ago in Cedar Valley, Utah.\u00a0\u00a0With only two elements in the image, the bird and blue sky, there are\u00a0few visual cues to tell the viewer what’s really going on.\u00a0 The hawk is in flight and the hanging feet suggest recent take-off but beyond that we’re relatively clueless.\u00a0 Among other things we don’t know anything about the recent perch hinted at by the leg angle\u00a0or even the true angle of flight since there are no indicators of true level in the image.\u00a0 The image could be accidentally or deliberately off-level and need drastic rotation<\/p>\n
A different crop tells us much more about reality (though as in this case too much “truth” may not always be a good thing…)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0476-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u00a01\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nA different crop includes part of the ugly pole from which the hawk took off.\u00a0 This version has been rotated to true level based on the assumption that the pole was close to vertical.\u00a0 The hawk had been perched on top of the insulator at upper left so now we can see how\u00a0steeply the hawk is dropping from its perch (compare the angle to the first version)\u00a0– possibly after prey very close to the pole but if\u00a0so this bird abandoned the attempt and flew to the next pole.\u00a0The hawk was\u00a0actually perched on top of\u00a0a second, dark brown insulator above the white one we can see so\u00a0it is dropping slightly more steeply than it appears.<\/p>\n
As I photographer I also learn something about technique from these types of shots.\u00a0 Take-off shots are difficult because it’s so easy to clip body parts as the\u00a0wings extend either up or down so being able to\u00a0predict (to some degree) the\u00a0vertical angle of\u00a0take-off can be very helpful.\u00a0 Very large raptors like eagles tend to drop down at takeoff from elevated perches, as do Prairie Falcons.\u00a0 But in my experience Red-tailed Hawks may launch down, horizontally or even slightly upwards.\u00a0 This unpredictable tendency can be frustrating but it’s still valuable to know – for example, when shooting red-tails at take-off I often give them more room in the frame by removing my teleconverter or not approaching too closely.<\/p>\n
Much ado about nothing?\u00a0 Perhaps.\u00a0 But us bird photographers need all the help we can get…<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a simple example of how changing the crop of a photograph can drastically alter one’s perspective on the image.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21994,"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":[6,334,450],"tags":[452,1860,146,451,1800,453,311],"class_list":["post-21988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-cedar-valley","tag-flight","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-rotation","tag-teleconverter","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0476b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5IE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21988","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=21988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"red-tailed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/red-tailed-hawk-0476b-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n