![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/red-tailed-hawk-9948-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-9948-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nPhotographing these hawks against the cliff background was both challenging and frustrating.<\/p>\n
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1\/1250\/ f\/7.1, 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 Late last\u00a0March I spent some time with a pair of Red-tailed Hawks while they were refurbishing an old nest on the side of a vertical cliff. The rocks behind the nest were about the same color as the hawks so the birds often didn’t stand out very well against the similar\u00a0background. In addition the rocks were so close to the nest that the background tended to be almost as sharp as the birds which compounded the problem (a soft, blurred background tends to isolate the subject\u00a0and set it apart).<\/p>\n I like this image better than most I took at the nest because two factors helped to mitigate the problem of isolating the bird against the\u00a0background:<\/p>\n I still have the problem of mostly similar colors throughout the\u00a0photo (plus a busy\u00a0background)\u00a0but for me the completely natural setting more than compensates for those issues. I love the “wildness” of the image since there isn’t even a hint of the hand of man to be seen.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photographing these hawks against the cliff background was both challenging and frustrating.<\/p>\n\n