Image specs: 1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM. To my surprise my shutter speed never fluctuated throughout the entire series even though I shoot in aperture priority.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3117-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3117-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Unlike most harriers this male was predictable. As he was hunting I’d seen him pass directly in front of this stand of phrags several times so I parked my pickup in the best spot for light angle and distance for flight shots and hoped he’d do it again. He obliged me.<\/p>\n
For most of the rest of the series I’ll keep my narration to a bare minimum. For better or for worse the images speak for themselves.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3118-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3118-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3119-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3119-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3124-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3124-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3125-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3125-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3127-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3127-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3128-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3128-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3129-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3129-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3130-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3130-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3132-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3132-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Finally he gave me direct eye contact.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3133-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-3133-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
This last photo is my favorite of the series. When I posted it to a bird photography critique forum some years ago some clown accused me of cutting the harrier out of another image and pasting it into this background which couldn’t be farther from the truth. A bit of a brouhaha was the result.<\/p>\n
From a technical standpoint I was thrilled to get this many sharp shots in the series, especially with the background so very close to the harrier. Typically in this situation my active focus point would grab onto the background and the bird would be soft.<\/p>\n
As a bonus I kept the harrier centered in the frame well enough in all of the photos that I didn’t have to compromise on composition while I was cropping the images. I think I was able to do as well as I did because back then harriers were unusually common at Farmington and they gave me lots<\/em> of practice with flight shots.<\/p>\nWhich explains why I’m so fond of them and why my pickup vanity plate reads HARRIER.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Note: Soon after I published this post I found out that one of my Facebook friends, KT Meiners, also has HARRIER vanity plates. It’s nice to have a kindred spirit.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Strictly from a technical perspective this is my best ever Northern Harrier flight series.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90333,"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":[334,341],"tags":[4747,34,86,1008,146,746,5393,234,250,311],"class_list":["post-90321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-northern-harriers","tag-adult-male","tag-aperture-priority","tag-circus-cyaneus","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-flight","tag-gray-ghost","tag-harrier-vanity-plate","tag-northern-harrier","tag-phragmites","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/northern-harrier-3133-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-nuN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90321","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=90321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}