Tag: directional light

Swainson’s Hawks In Different Types Of Light

It goes without saying that light angle, intensity and warmth can have huge effects on an image, both positive and negative.  I thought it might be interesting to see the effects of different types of light on the same species – in this case, Swainson’s Hawks.    1/160,  f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in Here, the sun was low and the light warm.  The light was directional (side lighting the bird) but it worked pretty well because the darker parts of the bird are in the direct light.  The head angle is just right for this pose – if the head were angled any more toward me I’d have lost the catch light and light on the face.  If it were turned any more away from me I’d have lost good eye contact.     1/1250,  f/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in Like in the previous image, this hawk is side lit.  The difference is that the bird has its light, creamy colored belly facing the sun so the whites, though they’re not blown out, are a tad too bright and lacking detail.     1/2000,  f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, natural light, not baited, set up or called in I took this image a little later in the morning, so the light wasn’t so warm and at that angle enough of it is reflecting up from the ground to give me sufficient detail in the shaded, dark  brown plumage…

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Stansbury Mountain Red-tailed Hawk

I like to photograph raptors (or most any bird, really) in this kind of light when I think I can get away with it.  When I first started photographing birds I always  made an effort to get the light source directly behind me and now I shudder to think of the interesting light I sometimes missed, especially since what I ended up with was often something rather mundane. I recently posted a somewhat similar image of a red-tail but the poses and settings in the two photos are quite different from each other.   1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc I found this hawk perched in dappled, directional light a few months ago.  It was near the bottom of a canyon in the Stansbury Mountains of Utah so I was looking slightly down on the bird –  a perspective I appreciate if the angle isn’t too steep.  I like the haughty pose – which was actually a reaction to another red-tail flying toward this bird.  Ron

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Just A Shot That I Like… #21 – Red-tailed Hawk In Dramatic Light

Strongly directional light can be a blessing or a curse and all too often it’s the latter.  It makes proper exposure a challenge because it’s very easy to blow the highlights and/or have shadows so deep that there’s no detail there at all.  But when things work out the effect can be appealing and dramatic.       1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This old cedar stump is a favorite perch of Red-tailed Hawks at the base of Utah’s Stansbury Mountains in the west desert.  It’s usually a frustrating situation for me though because I can’t access a proper position to get the sun behind me and for most of the day the sidelight is just too harsh for an exposure that works well.  But on this one morning the hawk was on the stump just as the sun came over the Oquirrh Mountains to the east so the light was soft and warm enough to make an exposure that I liked and I thought the shaded upper background worked well with the light on the bird’s head. Ron  Ron 

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