{"id":35525,"date":"2015-12-02T05:55:46","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T12:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=35525"},"modified":"2015-12-02T05:55:46","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T12:55:46","slug":"a-gray-ghost-and-the-convoluted-path-to-the-choice-of-a-blog-post-subject","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/02\/a-gray-ghost-and-the-convoluted-path-to-the-choice-of-a-blog-post-subject\/","title":{"rendered":"A Gray Ghost And The Convoluted Path To The Choice Of A Blog Post Subject"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last evening as I sat down at my computer to compose today’s post I engaged in a conversation with friend and blog follower Ed MacKerrow. Ed had been recently falsely<\/em> accused of unethically “photoshopping” an image he posted to a Facebook group (doing so is against their guidelines) and he was extremely frustrated by the situation. I commiserated with him because more than once I’ve been accused of doing the same thing and believe me, it hurts.<\/p>\n

During the conversation I sent him a link to an image I’d posted in the past to Nature Photographer’s Network (NPN) so he could see in one of the comments\u00a0where one of the members strongly implied that I had used Photoshop to deceptively and dishonestly\u00a0brighten and intensify the saturation of the yellow eyes of a male Northern Harrier. Offline another person had sent emails out to at least one other member saying that I had copied and pasted the harrier into the background of the image. Neither accusation was true but once they’re made at least some of it tends to stick.<\/p>\n

Ok, long story at least a little shorter – after my conversation with Ed I continued to browse through the photos I’d posted to NPN and ran across a different image that I’d posted there years ago and remembered how much I liked it.<\/p>\n

So here it is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"northern<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This image of a male Northern Harrier (the “Gray Ghost”)\u00a0was taken at Farmington Bay WMA on November 14, 2008 using my now-ancient Canon 40D. I like the nice look at the topside of the hawk in flight, the slight head turn toward the viewer, the strong hints of habitat in the background and of course that bright yellow eye (no, I didn’t enhance its color…).<\/p>\n

I hope I haven’t posted this image before but if I have, so be it…<\/p>\n

Anyway, this is how my blog post subjects sometimes originate – out of the deep blue sky and from a completely unexpected source. Thanks for the inspiration, Ed – in this case your pain was my gain…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 In case anyone’s interested in\u00a0perusing my older images posted to NPN, here’s the link<\/a>. There are four pages of them and you can read the critiques if you like, both good and bad…<\/em><\/p>\n

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

This is how my blog post subjects sometimes originate – out of the deep blue sky and from a completely unexpected source.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35526,"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":[334,16,341],"tags":[86,126,1008,746,211,462,234],"class_list":["post-35525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","category-northern-harriers","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-ethics","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-gray-ghost","tag-male","tag-nature-photographers-network","tag-northern-harrier"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/northern-harrier-7702-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-9eZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35525","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=35525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}