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<\/p>\nThis shot from yesterday morning came very close to being one of my favorite kestrel photos of all time.<\/p>\n
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1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, canvas added for composition, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n We found this lovely female American Kestrel perched near the top of a small tree in good light and at a reasonable distance for both perched and takeoff shots but it just wasn’t my day for bird photography. None of my shots of her in the tree were sharp enough. That just happens sometimes and often it’s for no reason that’s easily understood. It was a very cold morning and I was shooting from inside my warm pickup so it may have been caused by atmospheric conditions related to variable temps, heat waves from my pickup or something else. And my luck was about to get even worse.<\/p>\n As you can see from my image techs my camera settings weren’t appropriate for the situation so for less than a second I took my finger off of the shutter button to change them. Naturally she chose that exact moment to take off so I missed those takeoff shots. When this photo was taken I’d barely had time to return my finger to the shutter button and she was gaining air speed so I was trying to catch up to her again with my lens.<\/p>\n I think there’s lots of things to like about this photo. I love her flight posture with the flared tail, I have great light on her with eye contact and a catch light, I like the shadows of her flight feathers on the side of her breast and belly and we can still see the tip of the terminal branch of the tree she took off from.<\/p>\n But the most important parts of her are soft, in part because I was still trying to catch up to her with my lens. Her tail is sharp but her head isn’t. Sharpness might look almost acceptable at this low resolution but I had to double my typical amount of sharpening during processing to make the image look as good as it does and her head is still much too soft. At higher resolution it looks even worse. Because of clouds and bad weather she was my first opportunity for interesting shots in many days and I screwed it up so this one hurts.<\/p>\n I know, I know – there isn’t a bird photographer on the planet that something like this doesn’t happen to on a semi-regular basis. But knowing I have company doesn’t make me feel any better.<\/p>\n And besides, bellyaching can be cathartic.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This shot from yesterday morning came very close to being one of my favorite kestrel photos of all time.<\/p>\n