{"id":8740,"date":"2012-10-28T06:52:27","date_gmt":"2012-10-28T12:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=8740"},"modified":"2012-10-28T07:12:14","modified_gmt":"2012-10-28T13:12:14","slug":"red-tailed-take-off-from-farmington-canyon-complex-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/28\/red-tailed-take-off-from-farmington-canyon-complex-rocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Red-tailed Take Off From Farmington Canyon Complex Rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve said before how much I prefer the very dark Farmington Canyon Complex rocks on Antelope Island as perches, over the bright white Tintic Quartzite rocks found on the northern part of the island.\u00a0 This juvenile Red-tailed Hawk made my morning last month when it chose just such a rock to hunt from.<\/p>\n

I always enjoy it when I\u00a0can get multiple shots of some interesting behavior or action in sequence.\u00a0 To me it’s almost like a very\u00a0slow motion video\u00a0and\u00a0though\u00a0it may include a few\u00a0images that aren’t\u00a0perfect individually\u00a0I think that\u00a0collectively the photos gain value as a group for what they illustrate –\u00a0the whole can be greater than its parts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Photographing take-offs is always a challenge.\u00a0 The bird may just sit there for a half\u00a0hour or longer but when it happens it’s quick and easy\u00a0to miss.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

You also need to be concerned about what direction it will go and if you’re too close (it’s easy to clip wings if you are) or too far away (which shows less detail).\u00a0 Those with zoom lenses have an advantage over me because they can quickly adjust their focal length to whatever they want within their zoom range, while the only option I have is to attach or detach my teleconverter, which is cumbersome and takes time.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong though, I’m extremely happy with my 500mm prime lens and if I had that purchase to do over again I’d make the same decision.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Normally, a horizontal wing position isn’t my favorite but from this angle I think it can\u00a0be quite effective.\u00a0 But with the large wingspan of buteos you really have to be careful not to cut off a wing and to leave enough room in the frame in front of the bird for a pleasing composition – not easy to do when things are happening this fast.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong>Another difficulty is maintaining focus lock on the bird after it has left the perch.\u00a0 Here I was aided by the fact that the background wasn’t very close to the hawk so my camera didn’t try to “grab” anything back there and I was able to stay locked on the bird for multiple shots.\u00a0 In a situation like this I like to use A1 Servo and\u00a0Autofocus Point Expansion on my Canon 7D, which gives me 5 focus points in the center of the frame.\u00a0 If the background were closer I’d only use a single focus point and hope for the best.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I liked this intermediate wing position from this angle, especially when combined with the dangling feet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

You’ll notice from the image file numbers (they show up with your cursor on the image) that the last five frames are sequential, with no skips.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window, natural light, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

However, this one is four frames after the previous image and by now the hawk is turning away from me.\u00a0 If the\u00a0bird had been in level flight I’d have trashed the shot because of the horizontal wing position but here the bird is banking away, which gave me a good look at the underside of the bird.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

I’ve said before how much I prefer the very dark Farmington Canyon Complex rocks on Antelope Island as perches, over the bright white Tintic Quartzite rocks found on the northern part of the island.\u00a0 This juvenile Red-tailed Hawk made my morning last month when it chose just such a rock to hunt from. I always enjoy it when I\u00a0can get multiple shots of some interesting behavior or action in sequence.\u00a0 To me it’s almost like a very\u00a0slow motion video\u00a0and\u00a0though\u00a0it may include a few\u00a0images that aren’t\u00a0perfect individually\u00a0I think that\u00a0collectively the photos gain value as a group for what they illustrate –\u00a0the whole can be greater than its parts.   \u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window, natural light, not baited, set up or called in \u00a0Photographing take-offs is always a challenge.\u00a0 The bird may just sit there for a half\u00a0hour or longer but when it happens it’s quick and easy\u00a0to miss.     \u00a0\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, shot from pickup window, natural light, not baited, set up or called in You also need to be concerned about what direction it will go and if you’re too close (it’s easy to clip wings if you are) or too far away (which shows less detail).\u00a0 Those with zoom lenses have an advantage over me because they can quickly adjust their focal length to whatever they want within their zoom range, while the only option I have is to attach or detach my teleconverter, which is cumbersome and takes time.\u00a0…<\/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":[940,31,941,452,67,68,135,146,939,190,938,451,605,453,305,937],"class_list":["post-8740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-a1-servo","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-autofocus-point-expansion","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-canon-500mm-f4","tag-canon-7d","tag-farmington-canyon-complex","tag-flight","tag-focus-lock","tag-juvenile","tag-prime-lens","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-take-off","tag-teleconverter","tag-tintic-quartzite","tag-zoom-lens"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-2gY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8740","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=8740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}