Stealth killer

[arash_hazeghi]

This frame depicts a very young harrier (female) in search of prey in her natural habitat, these raptors fly very close to the ground and are virtually silent. They have sneaked up on me at point blank many times. I am lucky I am not a vole or this would be instant death from above. There is something almost sinister about her looks, make no mistake this is a killer. Once roosted on the ground they are incredibly skittish and will not allow anyone in the warning circle. I was lucky this bird flew towards me at an ideal angle. the late evening sun illuminated everything in gold. chose a pano crop to go with the wing position. This is a full frame image with a touch of canvas added to the left, at 1200mm a tiny error in focus plane can render the shot useless but camera locked on the head beautifully and tracked until both wings were clipped. It rendered at mazing amount of fine details from the nasal feathers, with DOF falling off quickly towards the wings. Hope you like it.


shot with A1 and 600mm f/4 GM + 2X TC (1200mm). ISO-2500 1/4000 sec handheld processed with C1P.

[Jay Ing]

I do like it. Esp. fond of the light leading the front edges of the wings!

[Dorian Anderson]

This is killer. It's hard to believe it was with a 2X! Lighting is lovely, as usual. Perfect head angle too.

[John Mack]

Gorgeous.

[Brian Sump]

Have so many Harrier frames with slightly funky wing positions, odd shadows or just off quartered angles and don't work.

This has none of that. Just the right angle and I love that it appears to have a slight head nod toward the camera. Enjoy the ripples at the end of the primaries. Gorgeous canvas of color including that gold you speak of.

The pano works for me, though I could see a version a touch looser on the sides at bottom with the same crop.

Lovely work Arash.

[dankearl]

Excellent!! Pretty light, great flight angle and wings for the species.