{"id":24415,"date":"2014-06-12T04:49:16","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T10:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=24415"},"modified":"2014-06-12T04:53:57","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T10:53:57","slug":"meadowlark-takeoffs-with-food-and-without-and-a-contrast-in-image-quality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/12\/meadowlark-takeoffs-with-food-and-without-and-a-contrast-in-image-quality\/","title":{"rendered":"Meadowlark Take-offs With Food And Without (and a contrast in image quality)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Western Meadowlarks are good subjects for practicing take-off shots.\u00a0 The rule of thumb is the smaller the\u00a0bird the faster the take-off, so songbirds are difficult subjects for this type of shot because of their small size and quickness.\u00a0 Meadowlarks are larger and slower than most other passerines so the photographer stands a reasonable chance of success\u00a0at getting at least part of the bird in the frame when the shutter clicks.\u00a0 It can be quite discouraging to get shot after shot with no bird in the frame when photographing those tiny “greased lightning” songbirds.\u00a0\u00a0 When it happens to me I call it “getting air”.<\/p>\n

Each of these images was taken last month on Antelope Island.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, canvas added for composition, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

For me the major appeal of this image is the grasshopper in the beak.\u00a0 This is one of the few shots I’ve kept of a songbird taking off with obvious food in the bill.\u00a0 You’ll notice that the bird isn’t as sharp as it could be which I believe was caused when my autofocus locked on to the\u00a0foliage at bottom rather than the meadowlark.\u00a0\u00a0This happens occasionally when I attempt to stay locked on the bird as it launches by using five active focus points (rather\u00a0than using only one, prefocusing and hoping the bird takes off lateral to me).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Even though this meadowlark has no food in the bill to add interest I prefer this image over the first one because of its superior image quality – almost the entire bird is sharp and I was close enough to get good detail.\u00a0\u00a0Take-offs are\u00a0very difficult\u00a0to photograph well\u00a0and I like action images (and challenges) so\u00a0I practice this type of shot\u00a0at almost every opportunity.<\/p>\n

Many bird photographers do the same but\u00a0others simply give up in frustration and shoot\u00a0static birds only.<\/p>\n

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

Western Meadowlarks are good subjects for practicing take-off shots. The rule of thumb is the smaller the bird the faster the take-off, so songbirds are difficult subjects for this type of shot because of their small size and quickness. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24417,"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":[3,6,334,370],"tags":[31,2060,146,2061,824,1931,1557,278,669,605,311],"class_list":["post-24415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-bird-photography-techniques","tag-flight","tag-focus-points","tag-grasshopper","tag-image-quality","tag-insect","tag-sharpness","tag-sturnella-neglecta","tag-take-off","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/western-meadowlark-2811-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6lN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24415","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=24415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}