![\"swainson's](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/swainsons-hawk-1914-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAny bird photographer knows that light and timing have a nasty habit of being uncooperative just when you need that cooperation most.\u00a0 While I was photographing Swainson’s Hawks in Montana last week I had more than my share of bad luck with light.\u00a0 Thanks to blustery skies my two best days with those hawks\u00a0were usually\u00a0in constantly changing light that made proper exposure, enough shutter speed for flight shots and catch lights in the eye elusive and\u00a0largely unobtainable.<\/p>\n
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\u00a01\/1000, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF-S17-85mm f\/4-5.6 IS USM @ 17mm, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n This is the “butterscotch” juvenile that I spent so much time with (another juvenile and an adult parent were always nearby but they were less cooperative).\u00a0 Notice that\u00a0this shot from inside my pickup was taken at only 17 mm (literally wide-angle) so the bird was quite close.\u00a0 When I would get a few minutes of beautiful light like this the bird would typically sit there with its back to me as it scanned the landscape for grasshoppers and do nothing.\u00a0 I had plenty of static shots of the hawk as it perched on these fence posts so I was mostly after take-off and flight shots.\u00a0 I spent a lot of time looking through my lens at this bird waiting for something to happen.<\/p>\n But exactly five minutes before this image was taken the clouds had rolled in and the hawk\u00a0naturally…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a01\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n chose that less than ideal time to take off from a different\u00a0post\u00a0and give me an appealing flight pose as it did so.\u00a0 I don’t keep (or even attempt)\u00a0many flight shots\u00a0taken in shade but I like the posture with the spread tail that gives the viewer such a\u00a0nice look at the ventral plumage and I did get lucky with one thing – a bright area in the clouds behind me gave me a catch light in the eye, despite the overall gloomy conditions.\u00a0 Some won’t like the wire at the bottom of the frame but these hawks\u00a0love those fences so who am I to quibble over a little rusty wire…<\/p>\n Truth be told it was likely “operator error” that saved this photo.\u00a0 It was moderately underexposed in camera and I had to bring it back up during processing.\u00a0 If\u00a0the image had been properly exposed when it was taken I likely wouldn’t have had enough shutter speed to get the hawk\u00a0as sharp as it is.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Any bird photographer knows that light and timing have a nasty habit of being uncooperative just when you need that cooperation most.<\/p>\n![\"swainson's](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/swainsons-hawk-4323-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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