1\/800, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nI photographed this Northern Harrier soon after sunrise on a\u00a0frigid\u00a0winter morning\u00a0several years ago at Farmington Bay WMA. I’m sure it would have flown off when I approached if it hadn’t been\u00a0so cold. At first glance it might look like this bird is rousing (shaking its feathers into place) but it wasn’t (this shutter speed couldn’t have frozen fast-moving feathers anyway).\u00a0Instead it\u00a0spread its tail and fluffed its feathers and held that pose for some time in an effort to keep warm.<\/p>\n
I adore the effect of the warm, golden light on those fluffed feathers – especially the graded\u00a0way their ends are highlighted on the left wing. I also enjoy the flared tail and those erected breast feathers. Harsh light ruins many potentially wonderful images but this light is about as soft as it can be and I couldn’t be happier about its effects on the image even though one outer tail feather is slightly bright.<\/p>\n
Yes, I could have had similar light in the evening but that time of day it would have been much warmer\u00a0so I’m almost positive the harrier would never have allowed\u00a0such a close approach\u00a0at those temperatures.<\/p>\n
When it comes to photography\u00a0(and almost everything else) I’m just a morning kinda guy!<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
PS – I’m sure many viewers noticed that I had more “technical problems”\u00a0with my blog yesterday afternoon and evening. Soon after Mia tracked down and fixed our previous issue (that one turned out to be a problem with Cloudflare) my web hosting service (Bluehost) had a server problem that shut down millions of websites worldwide, including Feathered Photography. The websites of some of my\u00a0blog followers\u00a0were also\u00a0shut down. Sometime during the night they apparently fixed it and I’m up and running again. <\/em><\/p>\nLet’s just hope it continues…<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I strongly prefer to photograph birds in early morning for a variety of reasons:<\/p>\n
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![\"northern-harrier-0102-ron-dudley\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/northern-harrier-0102-ron-dudley.jpg\")
1\/800, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n