Kes
A beautiful young kestrel was being held in public under the watchful eye of the instructor .The instructor had taken out for flight training to get used to fly...
Read more
A beautiful young kestrel was being held in public under the watchful eye of the instructor .The instructor had taken out for flight training to get used to flying in the general public spaces in training to be part of the pest control squad.
Read less
Read less
Feb, 2016Views
910
Likes
Awards
Action Award
Zenith Award
Top Shot Award 22
Creative Winter Award
Curator's Selection
Legendary Award
Member Selection Award
Spring Selection Award
Superb Composition
Absolute Masterpiece
Top Choice
Outstanding Creativity
Peer Award
All Star
Magnificent Capture
Top Ranks
Top 10 rankTop 10 rank week 1
Top 10 rank
Top 30 rankTop 30 rank week 1
Categories
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Discover more photos See all
Behind The Lens
Location
The photography was taken in a field near Paull (East Yorkshire) during my regular countryside walks. I am self taught at photography and this was a spurn of the moment opportunity to take pictures of a bird of prey, and this is a favourite of mine. I was fortunate to have chosen a route that would come across this falconry training session. If I had gone on another route back to my car, this picture would never exist.Time
I stumbled across the falconer training his 12 week old kestrel on my return to the car at the end of the country walk. it was around 9.45pm in the evening back in July 2015.Lighting
The light in the evening close to sunset is the best of the day for me, the sun is not too harsh on subjects when taking pictures and allows for the warm brown colours of the kestrel to come out naturally.Equipment
This was shot on a Nikon D40, with an 50-300mm F4.5-5.6 VR lens at ISO 220. The picture was taken at 180mm.Inspiration
I was on my typical countryside walk, I would capture pictures of landscape, butterflies and insects. I was looking to expand the range of pictures to include birds and it wasn't a successful day for it. The vegetation had been too thick to get a clear shot of any birds. I happened to come across the falconry training session. I knew I had once in a lifetime opportunity to capture some iconic pictures and this was my moment!Editing
There was only one adjustment to be done and that's to alter the contrast. No other processing was done.In my camera bag
The following is ever present in my bag, a Nikon D5300 and D3300 together with a 16-80mm DX VR lens, a 35mm DX f1.8 and a 50mm f1.8 prime lens. I sometimes add the 55-300mm VR to the bag if I am going to do some nature photography.Feedback
I took some pictures of the kestrel in flight so my camera was already set at 1/1000s which is the recommended shooting speed to capture birds in flights. When taking pictures of birds of prey, you will need to be aware that the birds tend to be alert to the slightest movements around them. Be sure to have sufficient memory to take a lot of pictures. For this picture, I had already taken 4 pictures before I had this pose, for the owl picture in my portfolio, it took at least 15 pictures to get what I wanted.
