{"id":23112,"date":"2014-04-07T05:28:36","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T11:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23112"},"modified":"2014-04-07T05:28:36","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T11:28:36","slug":"peregrine-falcon-in-flight-against-southern-utahs-famous-red-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/07\/peregrine-falcon-in-flight-against-southern-utahs-famous-red-rocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Peregrine Falcon In Flight Against Southern Utah’s Famous Red Rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I tend to like texture and colors in the backgrounds of birds in flight images\u00a0but the bright red rocks of southern Utah might be pushing it a little.<\/p>\n

I photographed this Peregrine Falcon last month in Wayne County\u00a0as it circled around a duck\u00a0it had been feeding on.\u00a0 It wasn’t quite as close as I’d prefer but I thought the following five sequential images were interesting as the bird passed between me and some red cliffs in the background.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon\u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The falcon was a bit of a mess as it had been feeding on a female Cinnamon Teal so its feet and particularly its bill were bloody.\u00a0 Here the bird is approaching the red cliffs.\u00a0 I’ve cropped the image as I have to include them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon\u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was fully aware that the cliffs were coming up and I was afraid that I would lose focus on the bird when they did\u00a0so (if I remember correctly) I deliberately stopped continuous autofocus (A1 Servo in Canon) and hoped that since the falcon was passing mostly laterally to me it would remain relatively\u00a0sharp.\u00a0 It did.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon\u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0It would have been nice if the falcon had given me some more\u00a0dramatic wing positions but these guys travel fast and largely use air speed to maintain flight so I didn’t get any exaggerated wing positions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon\u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0This is the only shot in the series where the bird is completely surrounded by the rocks in the background.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon\u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The falcon emerges from the cliff background…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a01\/2500, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon\u00a0EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM, 1.4 tc, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0and is once again surrounded by blue sky with the last of the cliffs below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I include this image for context – these are the background red rocks in the previous images.\u00a0 I took the\u00a0falcon flight shots\u00a0from my vehicle on a road out of frame to the left.\u00a0\u00a0 The birds in the foreground are Sandhill Cranes.<\/p>\n

I’m not saying that having these cliffs in the background is necessarily a good thing – they certainly are bright.\u00a0 But I thought they were interesting and a little bit different as I don’t recall having seen flight shots of Peregrines with similar backdrops.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I tend to like texture and colors in the backgrounds of birds in flight images but the bright red rocks of southern Utah might be pushing it a little.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23116,"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":[334,582],"tags":[940,454,583,1943,541,743,1942,1909],"class_list":["post-23112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-peregrine-falcons","tag-a1-servo","tag-autofocus","tag-falco-peregrinus","tag-fflight","tag-peregrine-falcon","tag-sandhill-crane","tag-utah-red-rocks","tag-wayne-county"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/peregrine-falcon-9333-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-60M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23112","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=23112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}