{"id":47870,"date":"2017-04-30T05:43:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T11:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=47870"},"modified":"2017-04-30T06:40:15","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T12:40:15","slug":"a-pintail-takeoff-and-a-valuable-lesson-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/30\/a-pintail-takeoff-and-a-valuable-lesson-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pintail Takeoff (and a valuable lesson learned)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have no idea why I’ve never thought about this before.<\/p>\n

I’ve tried for years to get spectacular shots of ducks (Cinnamon Teals especially but other species too)\u00a0taking off from the surface of the water. I’ve nearly\u00a0always failed, in large part because their takeoff is so fast and explosive and they generally don’t signal their intentions beforehand so I always cut off part of the bird or miss it entirely. But I learned something from this\u00a0Northern Pintail yesterday morning in northern Utah.<\/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<\/em><\/p>\n

The male Pintail had been basking in the sun on a sloping\u00a0spit of land between two parts of a shallow pond with\u00a0three other males\u00a0when two of them unexpectedly took off. I hoped that if this one followed suit I might get lucky with a takeoff shot so I made sure I had sufficient shutter speed and waited with my very itchy trigger finger for it to happen\u00a0. I tried to leave plenty of room in the frame above the bird to give me a better chance to get its entire body in frame when it exploded into the air but I didn’t have high hopes because I didn’t expect to be able to anticipate the liftoff.<\/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 + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

But I seldom attempt liftoff shots of ducks from land so I didn’t even think about the fact that it would be able to push off against the solid\u00a0ground (as opposed to water) so\u00a0it would squat before lifting off, signaling its intentions. It turns out I had plenty of time to get this squatting shot…<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, 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><\/p>\n

and another as\u00a0he was opening his wings and\u00a0pushing off…<\/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<\/em><\/p>\n

before he became airborne. I really like this photo…<\/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<\/em><\/p>\n

but this one is my favorite.<\/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, canvas added for composition,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

And I actually got a third flight shot without clipping any body parts although I did have to add canvas for composition because the bird was too close to the edge of the frame. I’m pretty embarrassed that I’d never realized that a duck taking off from land would signal its intentions by squatting and pushing off to get airborne – thus giving me plenty of time to get my burst going soon enough.<\/p>\n

I may be a slow learner but this was a lesson I won’t soon forget.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: This series illustrates why I always try to err on the side of too much shutter speed rather than too little for potential action shots. I shoot in aperture priority which means that my shutter speed varies considerably as the brightness of my subject, setting and background\u00a0changes. Here my shutter speed varied between 1\/4000 and 1\/2500 during the process of takeoff. I wanted an absolute minimum of 1\/2500 during the takeoff so it’s a good thing I started out as high as I did or I’d have had considerably more motion blur in some of the images. Those wings are fast!<\/em><\/p>\n

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

I have no idea why I’ve never thought about this before.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47883,"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":[6,334,395,2391],"tags":[2392,34,146,211,222,2393,282,2738],"class_list":["post-47870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-northern-pintail","tag-anas-acuta","tag-aperture-priority","tag-flight","tag-male","tag-motion-blur","tag-northern-pintail","tag-shutter-speed","tag-takeoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/pintail-6003b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cs6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47870","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=47870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}