{"id":42696,"date":"2016-10-11T06:13:51","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T12:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=42696"},"modified":"2016-10-11T08:02:11","modified_gmt":"2016-10-11T14:02:11","slug":"male-american-kestrel-blue-on-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/11\/male-american-kestrel-blue-on-blue\/","title":{"rendered":"Male American Kestrel &#8211; Blue On Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Directly or indirectly I learned at least three\u00a0important lessons\u00a0about photography from this beautiful male kestrel.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"42698\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/11\/male-american-kestrel-blue-on-blue\/american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,643\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;8&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;unknown&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XTi&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1191264873&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;700&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;400&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.008&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-42698\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley\" width=\"900\" height=\"643\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley-768x549.jpg 768w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley-150x107.jpg 150w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley-400x286.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>1\/125, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon Rebel XTi, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4\u00a0II Extender, not baited, set up or called in\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>I photographed him at Farmington Bay on October 1, 2007 so this is one of the oldest images in my archives. He was perched in shade\u00a0on an old snag that was a favorite kestrel perch but it&#8217;s long-gone now. The background is the Wasatch Mountains in shade several miles away. I really like\u00a0the blues and reds in\u00a0both bird and background &#8211; the rosy tones at lower left are\u00a0scrub oaks beginning to turn color.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Over time the images I took of this bird taught me several things about photography (or reinforced lessons I had learned previously). They include:<\/p>\n<p>1.) \u00a0If cash is limited, and it usually is, the wise photographer (bird photographers especially) will invest most of his\/her available\u00a0financial resources into quality lenses rather than\u00a0top of the line cameras.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Image quality is determined significantly more by the quality of glass than it is\u00a0by the camera. And\u00a0modern digital cameras become &#8220;obsolete&#8221;\u00a0relatively quickly but high quality lenses can\u00a0serve you well for many decades.<\/li>\n<li>I took this image with the highest quality and most expensive 500mm Canon lens on the market at the time but my camera was the cheapest Canon DSLR available (my gear can be seen in the techs below the image). I&#8217;ve been through a half-dozen cameras since then but I used that lens for\u00a08 years before I chose recently\u00a0to upgrade to its newest version. If I&#8217;d kept it I could\u00a0have used\u00a0it for many years to come and still get truly excellent images.<\/li>\n<li>So images of this bird reinforced the lesson. If early in my photography career I&#8217;d invested more in cameras than in a quality lens, images like this one would\u00a0surely\u00a0be of significantly reduced quality.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>2.)\u00a0 Catch lights in the eye vary greatly in size and shape &#8211; they don&#8217;t have to be pinpoints of light to be natural or\u00a0desirable.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I photographed this kestrel in shade (but the mountains far\u00a0behind me were lit up)\u00a0and back then I didn&#8217;t understand why the catch light was a horizontal band instead of a pinpoint\u00a0of light. I posted my question (including one of my images of this kestrel)\u00a0to Nature Photographers Network (NPN) and master bird photographer Bob Steele gave me a detailed\u00a0lesson on catch lights &#8211; \u00a0how they&#8217;re produced and\u00a0why they&#8217;re different sizes and shapes. That discussion, posted on the day after\u00a0this image was taken in 2007, is still online. It can be seen <a href=\"http:\/\/www.naturephotographers.net\/imagecritique\/bbs.cgi?a=vm&amp;mr=22314&amp;CGISESSID=4f773dbbfdc2621e9ae23e497f130216&amp;u=4720\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> if you&#8217;re interested.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>3.)\u00a0 Some catch lights can be used to level images.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I didn&#8217;t have my camera level while I was photographing this kestrel\u00a0and the bird was obviously tilted to the left in the uncropped photo. The only cue in the image that can be used to obtain true level is the horizontal catch light. Since it&#8217;s actually a reflection of the lit-up mountains behind me (the horizon)\u00a0I simply leveled the catch light to obtain true level. A pretty neat trick if you ask me&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Every time I see\u00a0images I took of this kestrel that morning\u00a0I&#8217;m fondly reminded of all I learned from\u00a0the bird.<\/p>\n<p>Apologies for the heavy load of &#8220;photo-geekiness&#8221; in today&#8217;s post but I know from feedback from viewers that some bird photographers out there\u00a0appreciate such fare. Believe me, tomorrow&#8217;s planned post will be <em>very<\/em> different from today&#8217;s&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Ron<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Directly or indirectly I learned at least three important lessons about photography from this beautiful male kestrel.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/11\/male-american-kestrel-blue-on-blue\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42698,"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":[340,6,334,2782],"tags":[28,3152,3151,3150,131,1008,1931,211,462],"class_list":["post-42696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-american-kestrel","tag-bob-steele","tag-catch-lights","tag-choosing-a-lens","tag-falco-sparverius","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-image-quality","tag-male","tag-nature-photographers-network"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/american-kestrel-6789b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-b6E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42696","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=42696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}