![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/box-elder-county-clouds-0136-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"box-elder-county-clouds-0136-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nI’m becoming\u00a0convinced that weather radar is\u00a0often worse than worthless. After all, knowing that you don’t know something for fact is better than thinking you do and then\u00a0having it turn out to be false.<\/p>\n
Yesterday after many weeks of socked-in morning weather and rotten light for photography\u00a0I awakened before 4 AM\u00a0to weather radar that unexpectedly showed no clouds at all\u00a0for several hundred miles around me. So I quickly put the finishing touches on my blog post before heading north in the dark. My birding destination was about 100 miles away and\u00a0I was almost half way there before it\u00a0became light enough to see that there were clouds. Lots of thick, heavy clouds! Clouds that the weather\u00a0radar hadn’t even\u00a0provided a hint of.<\/p>\n
So I spent all morning looking for birds in the wind and\u00a0under a thick canopy of gloomy clouds – terrible conditions for bird photography.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is what it looked like up north after several hours of driving around in the dismal light when some of the clouds finally began to thin out enough to show at least some\u00a0light coming through them (it had been much darker than this previously). Here we see part of the dried up lakebed of the disappearing Great Salt Lake with the northern Wasatch Mountains in the far background. Needless to say it was a frustrating morning, thanks in part to completely inaccurate and unreliable weather radar.<\/p>\n
I wish I’d thought to take a screenshot of the radar before I left home so I could show you the contrast between it and reality but of course at the time I didn’t realize how inaccurate it would turn out to be. I might as well have been rolling dice…<\/p>\n
I found one good bird all morning and of course it was in miserable light.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-6941-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-6941-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
1\/1000, f\/5.6, ISO 2000, 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 It was a stunning red Red-tailed Hawk\u00a0deeply buried in sagebrush. While perched much of its body was obscured by masses of twigs so my only hope was takeoff and flight shots. I made the conscious decisions to try two different strategies in an attempt to have enough shutter speed for\u00a0flight without using ISO’s\u00a0that were astronomical (even ISO 2000 is much<\/em> higher than I like to go)\u00a0and still get at least a few sharp flight shots in such low light.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1000, f\/5.6, ISO 2000, 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 I was only able to get one more shot after takeoff that I liked. After this the hawk just became too soft.<\/p>\n These photos are what they are – shots of a good-looking hawk taking off and\u00a0in flight in very poor light. But at least I have something<\/em> to show for all my time spent driving and looking for birds in dismal light and I also gained some experience in low-light bird photography.<\/p>\n So I keep telling myself that the trip wasn’t a complete failure…<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m becoming convinced that weather radar is often worse than worthless.<\/p>\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/red-tailed-hawk-6946-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-tailed-hawk-6946-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n