{"id":1694,"date":"2010-12-25T09:09:58","date_gmt":"2010-12-25T15:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/?p=1694"},"modified":"2025-10-02T15:04:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T20:04:52","slug":"nothern-harrier-repair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2010\/12\/25\/nothern-harrier-repair\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Harrier Wingtip Repair"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ClippedClipped wingtip young male Northern Harrier – D200, f6.3, 1\/640, ISO 400, 200-400mm VR with 1.4x TC at 400mm, natural light, not baited<\/span><\/p>\n

I usually do very little post processing of my images, cropping, rotation or white balance adjustments then selectively masking and sharpening the subject is about all I do.<\/p>\n

But there are times when I think an image might be worth a little extra work and this young male Northern Harrier image seemed worth the\u00a0effort.<\/p>\n

I was photographing some ducks in a small pond that has marshy areas on the shoreline and was focused on the birds on the water when out of the corner of my eye I spotted this young male harrier coming in my direction.<\/p>\n

I quickly focused on where I thought the harrier might fly by but I had not zoomed back and the harrier flew closer than I anticipated, thus the clipped wingtip.<\/p>\n

The image above is full frame, straight out of the camera and resized to\u00a0850 pixels on the long side.<\/p>\n

I knew when I clicked the shutter that I should have zoomed back to 350mm but it all happened so fast.<\/p>\n

\"YoungYoung male Northern Harrier with wingtip repaired – D200, f6.3, 1\/640, ISO 400, 200-400mm VR with 1.4x TC at 400mm, natural light, not baited<\/span><\/p>\n

I brought the image into ACR, made my adjustments and cropped the photo there then opened the file in Photoshop.<\/p>\n

I had to add canvas on the bottom and that took me longer than repairing the wingtip so that it looked very natural.<\/p>\n

The final image is a bit tighter on the top and bottom than I normally like but I loved the spread of the wings, the view of the plumage patterns and the look of concentration on the harrier’s face.<\/p>\n

I could not post this to a critique forum without disclosing the repair work I did to the picture because of my personal ethics.<\/p>\n

Also I don’t want to mislead any new photographers into believing that this image is “natural”.<\/p>\n

In addition, I wouldn’t enter it into a contest because the rules often stipulate that only minimal processing<\/em> should be done and cloning is not a minimal “processing”.<\/p>\n

I learned from this experience though and next time a situation like this occurs I will back the zoom up a bit.<\/p>\n

Even my photographic mistakes teach me something of value. On that note, I should say, this image didn’t make it into my photo galleries.<\/p>\n

Life is<\/em> good.<\/p>\n

Mia<\/p>\n

Click here<\/span><\/a> to view more of my Northern Harrier photos plus facts and information about this species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are times when I think an image might be worth a little extra work in post processing and this young male Northern Harrier image seemed worth the effort to repair a clipped wingtip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":158918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,1022,697,348,26],"tags":[2663,765,2783,3164,4033,4169,519,4006,391,310,4063,153,1077],"class_list":["post-1694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avian","category-davis-county-utah","category-farmington-bay-wma","category-northern-harriers","category-utah","tag-birds-of-prey","tag-circus-hudsonius","tag-harrier","tag-harriers","tag-hawk","tag-hawks","tag-nature","tag-northern-harrier","tag-photoshop-repair","tag-post-processing","tag-raptor","tag-raptors","tag-wingtip-repair"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t