{"id":73255,"date":"2019-07-08T05:21:39","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T11:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=73255"},"modified":"2019-07-08T08:05:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T14:05:12","slug":"prairie-falcon-in-flight-with-prey-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/08\/prairie-falcon-in-flight-with-prey-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Falcon In Flight With Prey"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been wanting to do this for a very long time so last night I finally caved in and just did it.<\/p>\n

The photo below is on the short list of my favorite shots of all time, partly because of its high degree of difficulty but certainly not limited to that. Feathered Photography veterans will likely recognize the photo because I’ve posted it before and others may remember seeing it as one of the images in the rotating banner at the top of my blog.<\/p>\n

But I haven’t been particularly happy with the way I processed the image back then so I wanted a do-over. This is it.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The Prairie Falcon, a young female I believe, had been enjoying her meal of frozen Northern Shoveler near the shore of the Great Salt Lake when two ravens flew in and started harassing her. So she took off with her prize in an attempt to get away from them. She was successful in her escape from the ravens but very soon after this photo was taken an adult Bald Eagle dived on her in flight and forced her to drop the duck. Then the eagle flew down and retrieved it.<\/p>\n

Yes, I felt sorry for the falcon because the shoveler belonged to her and I’m sure she worked hard for it.<\/p>\n

The lower background is the angry Great Salt Lake on a blustery winter day and if you look carefully you can see vague whitish blobs on the dark gray water that are whitecaps on the lake. There are also ice and snow crystals on the duck.<\/p>\n

This was a grab shot, basically “spray and pray,” so I’ve always been almost ecstatic that it’s as sharp as it is. And many other things worked out as well. Getting a Prairie Falcon in flight is difficult enough but here it has prey, the flight posture with the vertical wing position is one I like very much, a slight head turn toward the viewer provides great eye contact, there’s nice light on both birds and I think the background is somewhat unique and interesting. I couldn’t ask for much more than that but it seems like there’s always something. I do wish for just a little more room on the right for composition purposes but I’m sure as hell not going to complain very much about that.<\/p>\n

So, what did I do differently when I processed the image this time? Here’s the list:<\/p>\n