Immature Red-tailed Hawk in front of a field of grass – Nikon D500, f10, 1/1250, ISO 640, Nikkor 500mm VR with 1.4x TC, natural light, not baited
All my life I have heard people saying that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and I believe that to be true.
Yesterday after leaving the auto tour route at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge I spotted a beautiful immature Red-tailed Hawk perched on a post next to the road and even though the light angle wasn’t great and I wasn’t photographing when there was golden light I took a series of images of the young hawk as it looked around the area for prey.
The hawk was gorgeous, confiding and didn’t seem to be bothered at all by my presence because I used my Jeep as a mobile blind. Young hawks can be more approachable than mature hawks.
The thing about this immature Red-tailed Hawk photo is this: I don’t like the background color because I see these colors, tones and hues so frequently where I live in northern Utah. I don’t hate them, I’ve just grown to not care for them in my images.
The background in this photo is out of focus grasses bleached out by the sun.
However; I recognize that other people may like this photo because of the color of the background for various reasons so I didn’t just dump the whole series of images that I took of this regal young hawk.
I know that I could swap out the background in post processing for sky, cliff, forest, or canyon walls but that simply doesn’t work for me because I want my images to convey what I was seeing at the time I took the photo, whatever that may have been.
Life is good.
Mia
Click here to see more of my Red-tailed Hawk photos plus facts and information about this species.
Good portrait.
Nice image Mia