{"id":46955,"date":"2017-03-26T05:12:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T11:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=46955"},"modified":"2017-03-26T05:21:25","modified_gmt":"2017-03-26T11:21:25","slug":"seduced-by-a-prairie-falcon-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/26\/seduced-by-a-prairie-falcon-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Seduced By A Prairie Falcon In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Prairie Falcon in flight is a shot I always lust for and very seldom get. In almost 10 years of bird photography I only have two really\u00a0good ones (the best of the two can be seen here<\/a> ). Perhaps I want them more than I should…<\/p>\n

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

Two days ago as I was driving along a remote road in northern Utah we noticed a Prairie Falcon on the power pole directly\u00a0in front of us. But we noticed it too late and by the time I was stopped I was slightly past it and looking up at a steep angle at the bird. I was very surprised it didn’t fly when I stopped because they’re generally an extremely spooky species but it was obviously scanning the nearby pastures for prey and apparently\u00a0it didn’t want to be interrupted by something as mundane as my pickup. Eventually it flew off after prey, missed, and quickly\u00a0returned to the same pole with my pickup right\u00a0underneath it, which amazed me again – very unusual for a Prairie Falcon.<\/p>\n

It continued to hunt from the pole\u00a0and I prepared for another takeoff by removing my teleconverter (I was too close otherwise). When it launched this was the only shot I got that didn’t clip any body parts.<\/p>\n

But what you’re looking at isn’t really the “shot I got”.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This<\/em> is the shot I got!<\/p>\n

Readers know I despise wires and utility poles in my images. I came close to deleting\u00a0the photo but just couldn’t do it without cloning out the pole, insulator and wire to see what it looked like without them. Even though the cloned version screams for a perch behind the bird (because of the obvious take off posture of the falcon) I still enjoyed seeing the bird without the “hardware” and I thought some of my readers\u00a0might too.<\/p>\n

I despise\u00a0being seduced by the\u00a0clone tool (in most situations) almost as much as I\u00a0dislike having\u00a0wires and poles in my images so for me\u00a0this was a deal with the devil, a Faustian bargain of sorts, and my only consolation is having disclosed what I’ve done.<\/p>\n

Hopefully I’ll get another clean shot of a Prairie Falcon in flight soon. Bird photographers live on hope…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS –\u00a0Some disagree with\u00a0me\u00a0about the merits (or lack thereof) of using the clone tool in nature photography and that’s ok. But my\u00a0opinion is what it is…\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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

A Prairie Falcon in flight is a shot I always lust for and very seldom get.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46957,"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":true,"_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":[6,334,16,371],"tags":[1787,865,126,538,146,254],"class_list":["post-46955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","category-prairie-falcons","tag-clone-tool","tag-cloning","tag-ethics","tag-falco-mexicanus","tag-flight","tag-prairie-falcon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/prairie-falcon-8278b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cdl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46955","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=46955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}