![\"northern](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/northern-harrier-0379b-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a01\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nNearly all of the shots looked like this or much worse.\u00a0 Here the face is in deep shade, to the point where you can barely make out the eye.\u00a0 In many of the images the entire body was shaded.\u00a0 I took 83 shots of this bird in just over a minute and all of them are destined for the delete bin.\u00a0 With one exception.<\/p>\n
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![\"northern](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/northern-harrier-0342-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0Out of the 83 images I got one keeper.\u00a0 There are four things that made me like this shot when all the others were garbage or marginal at the very best.<\/p>\n
\n- For a brief moment the bird turned just enough to its right to put sufficient light on its right side<\/li>\n
- For an even briefer moment the harrier turned its head toward me enough to put light on the face and give me eye contact<\/li>\n
- Both of the above occurred with the wings in an interesting position (most of the time this bird was gliding with its wings held mostly horizontal)<\/li>\n
- All three of the above occurred as the harrier passed by some distant\u00a0mountains in the background which gave me a more interesting backdrop than plain blue sky<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
This combination of conditions was impossible to predict and I didn’t even see it happen through my lens while I was taking the photos.\u00a0 I fully expected to delete every one of these harrier shots when I got home but in the end I got one image that I consider to be an unexpected gem.<\/p>\n
My point is this: Take The Shot!.\u00a0 Conditions change quickly,\u00a0birds move fast and pixels are cheap.\u00a0 After all it’s not like we have to buy film and pay for development anymore.\u00a0 If you wait until you actually notice that conditions are right for a photo (especially when photographing birds)\u00a0that fleeting moment may already be gone by the time you can click the shutter.\u00a0 I’m not suggesting that we should fire away when we know that conditions\u00a0will likely remain poor for photography but when there’s a chance, however remote, that we can get a shot that pleases us I say that we should all go for the gusto\u00a0more often.\u00a0 I very nearly didn’t even attempt to photograph this harrier as it flew alongside me but this one image makes me glad that I did.<\/p>\n
I conclude with a hockey analogy from the legendary Wayne Gretzky – “You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take<\/em>“.<\/p>\nRon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday morning just after sunrise I was driving slowly on an isolated and deserted road looking for birds when I encountered a male Northern Harrier hunting along the road edge as it flew in the same direction I was traveling. <\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23924,"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":[6,334,341],"tags":[86,146,990,234,2018],"class_list":["post-23923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-flight","tag-light-angle","tag-northern-harrier","tag-wayne-gretzky"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/northern-harrier-0342-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6dR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23923","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=23923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}