{"id":7714,"date":"2012-09-16T17:09:37","date_gmt":"2012-09-16T23:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=7714"},"modified":"2012-09-16T18:33:33","modified_gmt":"2012-09-17T00:33:33","slug":"landing-red-tailed-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/16\/landing-red-tailed-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"Landing Red-tailed Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t often succeeded in photographing a landing raptor.\u00a0 When they take off they usually don’t come back and when they do it’s often difficult to maintain focus on them as they land because of close backgrounds.\u00a0 However, this immature Red-tailed Hawk gave me just such an opportunity a couple of days ago.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2000, f 7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

It was hunting from a\u00a0huge rock outcropping\u00a0and looking down over the valley in the background of this image.\u00a0 I spent quite a while with this bird but\u00a0it was side lit and I wasn’t very optimistic about getting a decent\u00a0take-off shot because I expected it to spot\u00a0potential prey in the valley below and take off away from me, giving me butt shots only.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f 7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

Which is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

However, I saw where the bird landed far below in the valley, missed the prey and took off again so I wondered if I could be lucky enough for it to return to the same perch.\u00a0 I wasn’t particularly optimistic because I was so close to\u00a0the rock\u00a0(you’ll notice from my techs\u00a0that I had even removed my tc).\u00a0 The problem was that\u00a0as soon as the hawk took off\u00a0from\u00a0that distant perch\u00a0it disappeared behind the same massive rock outcropping on the side of\u00a0the mountain that had been its perch\u00a0and if it did return I wouldn’t know it until the very last split second, as it flared up\u00a0to land on the rock from behind and below it.<\/p>\n

So I\u00a0prefocussed on the likely spot on the rock where it might land and waited.\u00a0 And waited.\u00a0 For what seemed like forever.\u00a0 I almost gave up because it took so long and I figured it had already landed somewhere else far\u00a0below and behind the\u00a0rock outcropping, where I couldn’t see it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red-tailed<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 1\/1600, f 7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

And then boom, there it was filling my frame.\u00a0 This shot, which could have been the most\u00a0dramatic, was ruined because the sidelight\u00a0put no light on the face or eye – just\u00a0another candidate for the trash bin except for possible use in explanatory\u00a0blog posts like this one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 1\/1600, f 7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0But I liked the next image pretty well because of the light on the face, the wing position and the almost three dimensional look of the wings provided by their cupped\u00a0curvature.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 1\/1600, f 7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4<\/em><\/p>\n

And I think this next shot in the burst turned out well also.\u00a0 I do wish there wasn’t so much whitewash on the rock, but hey – birds do have to poop occasionally…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

Perhaps this last shot of the rock outcrop\u00a0(taken this morning) will give you some idea of the setting and the challenge I was facing.\u00a0 The rock is high on the side of the mountain looking down over a small valley.\u00a0 You’ll get a bettter feeling for depth and height by noticing the road I used to get up here in the lower right corner of the frame.\u00a0 The red “X” above the road marks the approximate spot where the hawk landed and then took off to the left behind the outcropping.<\/p>\n

Usually when I attempt to photograph a landing raptor I can see it\u00a0coming in\u00a0through my peripheral vision or other eye.\u00a0 This blind approach of the bird was a new and interesting\u00a0experience for me so I thought I’d describe it here.<\/p>\n

Many (if not most) images of landing raptors have been baited, something I won’t do for ethical reasons, so I was happy to get these two shots –\u00a0despite all the whitewash…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I haven’t often succeeded in photographing a landing raptor.\u00a0 When they take off they usually don’t come back and when they do it’s often difficult to maintain focus on them as they land because of close backgrounds.\u00a0 However, this immature Red-tailed Hawk gave me just such an opportunity a couple of days ago.   \u00a01\/2000, f 7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4 It was hunting from a\u00a0huge rock outcropping\u00a0and looking down over the valley in the background of this image.\u00a0 I spent quite a while with this bird but\u00a0it was side lit and I wasn’t very optimistic about getting a decent\u00a0take-off shot because I expected it to spot\u00a0potential prey in the valley below and take off away from me, giving me butt shots only.     \u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f 7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4 Which is exactly what happened. However, I saw where the bird landed far below in the valley, missed the prey and took off again so I wondered if I could be lucky enough for it to return to the same perch.\u00a0 I wasn’t particularly optimistic because I was so close to\u00a0the rock\u00a0(you’ll notice from my techs\u00a0that I had even removed my tc).\u00a0 The problem was that\u00a0as soon as the hawk took off\u00a0from\u00a0that distant perch\u00a0it disappeared behind the same massive rock outcropping on the side of\u00a0the mountain that had been its perch\u00a0and if it did return I wouldn’t know it until the very last split second, as it flared up\u00a0to land on the rock from behind and below it. So I\u00a0prefocussed on the likely…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,450],"tags":[31,42,452,126,768,190,579,451,267,311],"class_list":["post-7714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-baiting","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-ethics","tag-immature","tag-juvenile","tag-landing","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-ron-dudley","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-20q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7714","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=7714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}