![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/northern-harrier-1788-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-1788-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nAn unusual setting for a harrier.<\/p>\n
Yesterday morning as I was driving slowly on a dirt road that hugged the base of a desert mountain range an immature female Northern Harrier was hunting in the semi-marshlands immediately to my right. Suddenly she crossed the road directly in front of me to hunt between me and the nearly vertical cliffs of the mountains to my left that I was very close to.<\/p>\n
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1\/1000, f\/9, 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 She circled several times within the semicircular bowl between me and the very steep mountains right behind her which gave me cliffs in the background instead of the much more typical marshlands that are usually the backgrounds in my harrier photos.<\/p>\n The very low sun soon after dawn produced a patchwork of shadows and well lit areas on the cliffs behind her. Here I caught her with a mostly dark background, in sharp contrast to…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/1000, f\/9, 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 the very next shot in the burst that caught her with well lit rocks behind her. I think the contrasting light and dark backgrounds provide a decidedly different flavor to the two photos, even though the flight postures of the hawk are almost identical.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On mornings when the forecast is for sunshine it’s my habit to set my camera to my default settings before I even leave the house. My default aperture is f\/6.3 and that’s where I had it set when I left home in the dark yesterday. But this harrier was the first bird I photographed that morning and somehow, inexplicably, my aperture had changed from f\/6.3 to f\/9 and I hadn’t noticed.<\/p>\n That little ‘accident’ cost me. If I’d been at my preferred f\/6.3 instead of f\/9 I’d have had less depth of field so the cliffs in the background would have been softer with a more pleasing bokeh.<\/p>\n I think that was more of an accident than a mistake. There’s a difference. My mistake was not checking my settings again as soon as I arrived on site.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An unusual setting for a harrier.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/northern-harrier-1789b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"northern-harrier-1789b-ron-dudley\\"")
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