{"id":22575,"date":"2014-03-09T05:02:40","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T11:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=22575"},"modified":"2014-03-09T05:02:40","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T11:02:40","slug":"landing-red-tailed-hawk-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/09\/landing-red-tailed-hawk-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Landing Red-tailed Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

I believe this to be a perspective on a landing raptor that one seldom sees in a photograph.\u00a0 It may not be to everyone’s taste but I found it interesting nonetheless.<\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0not easy\u00a0to photograph birds in the process of landing because they’re difficult to track as they approach their landing spot – autofocus tends to\u00a0lock on to the\u00a0background instead of the bird.\u00a0\u00a0One trick is to pre-focus\u00a0on their soon-to-be perch but you typically don’t know exactly where it will be – birds are unpredictable like that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But for this shot I had a good idea where the hawk would land – right on top of the whitewash.\u00a0 These traditional perches have likely been used by raptors\u00a0for decades, perhaps even\u00a0centuries or more and the white uric acid stain is persistent and obvious, especially on dark rocks like these on Antelope Island.<\/p>\n

Here the whitewash was likely being used as a target twice – by me and by the hawk.\u00a0 I pre-focused on the spot and fired off a burst as the bird landed and hoped for the best.\u00a0 I expected\u00a0that the images would likely be throw-ways because they’d be butt shots and I wouldn’t be able to see the bird’s head but I got lucky\u00a0with this\u00a0image\u00a0and there’s even light in the eye.\u00a0 I like the intensity of concentration of the hawk on its target, the foot\/talon position, the shadow on the rocks revealing individual flight feathers, the “open” alula\u00a0and feather group definition of the right wing\u00a0and the good look at much of the dorsal surface of a landing raptor.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s still a “butt shot” but it works for me in a different sort of way.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – I hope all of you are dealing with the time change this morning better than I am.\u00a0\u00a0 Speaking of butts, it kicked mine!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I believe this to be a perspective on a landing raptor that one seldom sees in a photograph. It may not be to everyone’s taste but I found it interesting nonetheless.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22576,"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":[3,6,334,450],"tags":[953,454,452,1528,945,1532,146,190,579,451,1059,1056],"class_list":["post-22575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-alula","tag-autofocus","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-excreta","tag-feather-groups","tag-feces","tag-flight","tag-juvenile","tag-landing","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-uric-acid","tag-whitewash"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-5233-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5S7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22575","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=22575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}