{"id":43255,"date":"2016-11-03T05:58:39","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T11:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=43255"},"modified":"2016-11-03T07:10:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T13:10:09","slug":"red-tailed-hawk-making-lemonade-out-of-a-big-fat-lemon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-making-lemonade-out-of-a-big-fat-lemon\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Hawk – Making Lemonade Out Of A Big Fat Lemon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or at least trying to…<\/p>\n

In bird photography a given situation is often so fraught with actual or potential conditions that could\u00a0ruin any possibility of getting good photos that the photographer is torn between sticking it out and hoping something miraculous will happen or moving on and looking for\u00a0greener pastures. The situation I faced yesterday morning at Farmington is a case in point.<\/p>\n

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\"glover-lane-1325-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

I watched as a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk flew down from a power pole, caught prey (presumably a vole) and consumed it, and then landed on the dark post marked by the red arrow in this photo. While perched the bird was mostly side-lit (as you can see by the shadows at lower left), my view of the hawk was partially obscured by a strange-looking metal post next to the perch and in order to get an angle on the bird from my pickup I had to turn it cross-ways on the road which made me very uneasy about any traffic that might come by. Moving further to my right was impossible because of the road limitations and besides that would only make the side light worse.<\/p>\n

So I was stymied by perched shots because of the metal post near the perch and takeoff and flight shots were a dicey situation too. If the hawk took off to my right or left I had a slight possibility of getting light on the face and eye but all the posts and signs were likely to interfere with at least some of the shots (by the way, that’s part of\u00a0Antelope Island in the background).<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed-hawk-0510-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is what I saw through my viewfinder (here the hawk slipped on the perch while cleaning its bill so its wings are out). Because of the metal post perched shots were a waste of time and pixels.<\/p>\n

The situation wasn’t promising and I was concerned enough about the possibility of traffic approaching that I decided to stow my gear, start my engine and move on down the road. But a split second later the hawk changed my plans when it…<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed-hawk-0515-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

took off to my right.<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed-hawk-0519-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I managed to get several shots that I like…<\/p>\n

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\"red-tailed-hawk-0521-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

but I had to squeeze the lemon too hard to get any lemonade out of this one. As you’ll see below I had to cheat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed-hawk-0521b-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the “real version” of the previous image the edge of one of the signs is directly in front of the bird so I cloned it out.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed-hawk-0522-ron-dudley\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this last photo in the series you’ll see that Murphy’s Law prevailed once again. The\u00a0hawk is soft because my focus points locked onto the sign instead of the bird but at least the hawk is following traffic laws and\u00a0flying in the direction indicated\u00a0by the sign… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

For\u00a0bird photographers there’s nothing new here.\u00a0Each of us faces similar challenges daily\u00a0with our unpredictable and recalcitrant\u00a0subjects. But I thought non-photographers especially might be interested in seeing what often goes into getting (or not getting) “the shot”.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Or at least trying to…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43258,"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":[6,334,2782,450],"tags":[452,865,397,146,190,3181,451,2738],"class_list":["post-43255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-cloning","tag-farmington-bay","tag-flight","tag-juvenile","tag-murphys-law","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-takeoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/red-tailed-hawk-0515-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-bfF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43255","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=43255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}