{"id":82834,"date":"2020-03-15T06:08:18","date_gmt":"2020-03-15T12:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=82834"},"modified":"2020-03-15T10:25:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-15T16:25:01","slug":"black-billed-magpie-giving-me-practice-at-photographing-takeoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/15\/black-billed-magpie-giving-me-practice-at-photographing-takeoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Black-billed Magpie Giving Me Practice At Photographing Takeoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

And this bird photographer can always use the practice.<\/p>\n

Back in March of 2011 I was relatively new to photographing magpies so I was struggling with both the difficult exposure on a black and white bird and the challenge of keeping that incredibly long tail completely in the frame during takeoff and in flight.<\/p>\n

After repeatedly clipping the tail and other body parts it finally occurred to me that my chances would improve if I removed my teleconverter to give me more room in the frame. Duh!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The pair of magpies was busy building their nest in a greasewood on Antelope Island but most of the time while they were on the nest bush they had masses of twigs in front of them so I concentrated on takeoffs (landings were far beyond my skills back then).<\/p>\n

Here I caught one of the birds immediately after takeoff with the mudflats of the Great Salt Lake in the background. I think that bit of standing blue water adds some welcome color to the image.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the next shot in the burst during the same takeoff. Back then I was tickled to get two shots of the same takeoff without clipping body parts even though I had to add a sliver of canvas in front of the bird to achieve a composition that was at least acceptable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Eight minutes later I captured what is likely the same magpie taking off from the same spot and in the same direction (probably due to the prevailing south winds). This time the bird was a little lower relative to the greasewood and the water in the background and there’s a twig in front of the bird. I’m not fond of that twig directly in front of the face but I was happy to catch the magpie perfectly framed between the two parts of the bush.<\/p>\n

Whether they’re perched or in flight magpies are tough subjects. If you have access to them and you’re an aspiring bird photographer you probably couldn’t choose a better species to practice on.<\/p>\n

Once you’ve developed skills at photographing magpies other species should be just a little easier.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Addendum: In a comment below Elmer Deloso asked to see where my active focus point was. Not ideal in this case but it worked out.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

And this bird photographer can always use the practice.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82837,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,6,334,363],"tags":[31,57,146,574,610,2738],"class_list":["post-82834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-black-billed-magpies","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-black-billed-magpie","tag-flight","tag-greasewood","tag-pica-hudsonia","tag-takeoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/black-billed-magpie-0290-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-ly2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82834","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=82834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}