{"id":49573,"date":"2017-06-30T03:49:47","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T09:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=49573"},"modified":"2017-06-30T03:49:47","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T09:49:47","slug":"lark-sparrow-at-takeoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/30\/lark-sparrow-at-takeoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Lark Sparrow At Takeoff…"},"content":{"rendered":"

and one reason\u00a0bird photographers need to be both quick and lucky. I’m only including this first image to help me\u00a0make my point.<\/p>\n

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1\/8000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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

Two days ago in the Stansbury Mountains this Lark Sparrow was so far away that the only chance I had for an image where the bird filled enough of the frame for\u00a0barely acceptable\u00a0image quality was if it took off and filled more of the frame with its open wings. I’ve included this\u00a0uncropped version of the photo taken a split-second before takeoff to demonstrate how far away I was from the bird (obviously my blindingly fast shutter speed was a mistake on my part).<\/p>\n

In this unfortunate situation the only advantage for me was that if I was very fast with my trigger finger\u00a0I might have enough room and enough time\u00a0to catch this quick little bird in flight before it\u00a0was “out of the picture”. Anticipating that if I was lucky the sparrow might turn a little more toward me as it took off to my left\u00a0I framed it to the right of center to\u00a0give me\u00a0even more room in that direction and waited tensely for takeoff.<\/p>\n

But the little bugger pulled a lightning-quick\u00a0maneuver I don’t often see that almost foiled my best-laid plans.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 800, 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

So fast that it barely registered with my eye or my brain the sparrow twisted over 180\u00b0\u00a0in a counterclockwise direction on its juniper perch\u00a0and took off to my right instead of\u00a0my left – all in a continuous motion.<\/p>\n

As a result I\u00a0don’t have quite enough room on the right for\u00a0the composition I’d prefer but I really like the takeoff posture and the light on the bird (even though there’s not a lot of detail in some of the deep\u00a0shadows and the face isn’t quite tack sharp). The image would never print\u00a0huge with high quality because it’s been cropped to only 42.5% of the original photo (8.5 of 20 MP) but even though it has its weaknesses I keep coming back to it so I decided to feature it in today’s post.<\/p>\n

But for me\u00a0the bigger part of this\u00a0equation is how much fun it is to pit my wits against the\u00a0vagaries of predicting bird behaviors and getting a shot I like despite them trying valiantly to stymie my\u00a0best efforts. Perfect shot or not I still look at this image as a limited\u00a0success.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I win, more often I lose and other times the results are in-between. But it’s nearly\u00a0always fun.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

and one reason bird photographers need to be both quick and lucky. I’m only including this first image to help me make my point.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49575,"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":[6,334,367],"tags":[726,146,197,294,2738,311],"class_list":["post-49573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-lark-sparrows","tag-chondestes-grammacus","tag-flight","tag-lark-sparrow","tag-stansbury-mountains","tag-takeoff","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/lark-sparrow-0692-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cTz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49573","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=49573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}