1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nI photographed this Swainson’s Hawk ten days ago as it took off from a tree in Box Elder County. I like the dynamic, vertical wing position, the clean background and I think that bulging crop is interesting.<\/p>\n
But I’m not particularly fond of the image overall because the light was just too harsh. It has reduced some of the\u00a0detail in the\u00a0hawk and two wing primary shafts in the right wing\u00a0are so bright that they’re very nearly blown. During processing I removed those two bright areas from my sharpening mask (sharpening increases brightness) but they still\u00a0grab my eye\u00a0every time I look at the image.\u00a0In my view\u00a0harsh light generally has a negative effect on my bird images.<\/p>\n
The higher the sun is in the sky the harsher the light tends to be. Sharp-eyed and knowledgeable viewers will get a hint as to the position of the sun when this image was taken by noticing where the catch light is on the hawk’s eyeball. With the bird’s head level that catch light is right at the top edge of the eye. If the sun had been low and behind me the catch light would have been about in the middle of the eye. Not long after this image was taken the sun would have\u00a0been so high that I’d have had no catch light at all.<\/p>\n
As I’ve discussed before, catch lights are so very important to give “life” to our subjects – yet another reason to photograph with the sun relatively\u00a0low\u00a0in the sky.\u00a0And it’s particularly important with raptors because their heavy brow ridges tend to shade the eye (that’s exactly their purpose) when the sun is high so catch lights are more difficult to get in raptors\u00a0than they are in most other birds.<\/p>\n
This image was taken at 10:31 AM. This time of year that’s just too late to get the light quality I prefer. Winter would be a different story.<\/p>\n
My\u00a0general rule of thumb – if my shadow is\u00a0shorter than I am\u00a0I\u00a0usually pack it in for the day.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m posting this image for its shortcomings, not for its strengths.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39142,"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":[6,334,645],"tags":[2550,647,566,172,2943,646,605],"class_list":["post-39141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-swainsons-hawks","tag-box-elder-county-utah","tag-buteo-swainsoni","tag-catch-light","tag-harsh-light","tag-sharpening-mask","tag-swainsons-hawk","tag-take-off"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/swainsons-hawk-1304-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-abj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39141","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=39141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"swainson's](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/swainsons-hawk-1304-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n