![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/coopers-hawk-5716-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"coopers-hawk-5716-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nAnd some thoughts about rotating our images to level during processing when we have conflicting leveling cues.<\/p>\n
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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, 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 Six months ago I spent some time with this Cooper’s Hawk in a Wasatch Mountain canyon on two consecutive mornings. Based on photos of this species I see from others I’d say that they’re photographed most often in suburban settings but I tend to have better luck with them out of the city and neighborhoods and I’m fine with that.<\/p>\n Here I captured “him” stretching his tail. I believe he was also stretching his left wing but we can’t see it because his body and the perch were blocking it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Photos like this one can be a little confusing to the eye, especially straight out of the camera before they’ve been processed. Fence rails like the one this hawk is perched on tend to be level or fairly close to it and our brain uses that fact as a cue to suggest what is truly level. But I was shooting at a peculiar angle on this bird, from above it and to one side, which places the fence rail at an exaggerated angle in the frame. Throw in the fact that the rail may not have been perfectly level in the first place and the photographer has a potentially confusing task when he\/she attempts to rotate the image to level during processing.<\/p>\n So I used the grasses in the background as my primary leveling cue. Even though mature grasses often lean when they’re this tall they initially grow vertically and they attempt to stay that way so I assumed their average angle was vertical and rotated accordingly.<\/p>\n In the end the image still may not be perfectly level but I did the best I could with the cues I had.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And some thoughts about rotating our images to level during processing when we have conflicting leveling cues.<\/p>\n