![\"loggerhead-shrike-1770-ron-dudley\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/loggerhead-shrike-1770-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSuper-telephoto lenses can do a great job on the bird but they often leave the viewer clueless about habitat.<\/p>\n
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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n I photographed this Loggerhead Shrike about six weeks ago on Antelope Island. The bird is sharp and has good detail, I had\u00a0nice light and the background is clean. But the image is essentially a “bird on a stick” and provides the viewer little information about the setting\/habitat because the perch is isolated from everything around it and the extremely shallow depth of field at these focal lengths leaves us mostly in the dark about what’s really\u00a0in the background.<\/p>\n I’m not saying that’s necessarily\u00a0a bad thing – in fact it has the advantage of helping the viewer to focus on the subject (fewer distractions) but it sure leaves us clueless about habitat.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The shrike did give me another pose that I like but whenever I see an image like this I always wonder what’s really back there. Is it sky? Is it water? Could it be far away mountains? Or something else?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was actually both water\u00a0(an arm of the Great Salt Lake)\u00a0and mountains and there may have even been a little sky, though the transition between mountains and sky is difficult to discern when it’s so blurred.<\/p>\n This photo, taken a few minutes after the shrike images and from very nearly the same angle, puts the perch into perspective in the habitat. I sometimes take photos like this because it\u00a0allows me to recall\u00a0the conditions when I photographed the bird and\u00a0it reminds me that in the real world (as opposed to the false perspective of the original highly magnified image of\u00a0the subject) the bird wasn’t\u00a0isolated from its habitat at all.<\/p>\n So when I see one of my\u00a0bird photographs taken long ago I can often mentally meld\u00a0the bird with its habitat and that allows me to appreciate the image\u00a0even more.<\/p>\n A little weird perhaps but it works for me…<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Super-telephoto lenses can do a great job on the bird but they often leave the viewer clueless about habitat.<\/p>\n![\"loggerhead-shrike-1763-ron-dudley\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/loggerhead-shrike-1763-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"great-salt-lake-from-antelope-island-1110-ron-dudley\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/great-salt-lake-from-antelope-island-1110-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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