Northern Harrier

[Geoffrey Montagu]

A couple of days ago on one of our coldest days this winter, I set out as I've been doing for the last week or so in search of the Short-eared Owls that have been showing up at a local grassland preserve. It's been hit or miss and when it's been a hit it's usually very low light. As a bonus there has been a good showing of Northern Harriers competing with the SEOW, in beautiful late afternoon light. I kept trained on this Harrier as it dove into the tall grasses and pop up, and zero in on another possible critter to dine on. C&C welcome.


D500, Nikon 500mm PF, 1/2000s, f/6.3, ISO 640, handheld.


Geoffrey




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[Randy Stout]

Geoffrey:

Love this pose, unusual to see the body and wings so parallel to the sensor like this. Good eye contact, exposure.

I might crop down just a bit from the top.

I am not seeing quite as much detail in the face and torso as I might like. I know your combination can do very well. Was this much of a crop?

Randy

[dankearl]

Great pose, details and sharpness are lacking... just a question, why stop down at all with the 500pf lens?
f6.3 compared to f5.6 gets you nothing more than higher iso.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I'll agree that it is not tack sharp as it could, but boy did this harrier give you an amazing pose! Nice full wings. Hope you get some good stuff from the SEOWs at this spot!

[arash_hazeghi]

the pose is awesome but the bird is out of focus and soft, bummer

TFS

[Dorian Anderson]

Yeah, killer pose, but it's a bummer the bird is soft. Upper right part of the frame feels a bit empty, and I'd warm the frame up a bit as it feel quite cold right now.

[Steve Kaluski]

Sadly Geoffrey, even addressing the Contrast the Raw converter adds in, and taking the blue out of the wing, I was hoping there might be a tad more in there to tease out, but not.

Subject to the distance, if it was far out, f/5.6 would have given you at tad more DoF, however if it was close in, you would be running out of DoF.

Hope you get other opportunities soon.

TFS
Steve

[John Mack]

Great view of those underwings. Nice framing and separation from the background here. Light looks nice as well.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Thanks everyone. Randy I think you made the accurate observation of it being too much of a crop, which it was. I like the pose which got the best of my judgement on cropping. Thanks Steve for taking the time and trying to coax a bit more from my image.

Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu (http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu)