Raising the RaptorsJordan Paw documents a pair of red-tailed hawks rearing their young with the Tamron SP 70-300mm lens. |
Article By Jennifer Gidman Images by Jordan Paw |
North Carolina photographer Jordan Paw was photographing cardinals and blue jays near Raleigh’s Nash Square in March when a pair of red-tailed hawks swooped overhead and caught his eye. The hawks were moving too fast that day to catch them in his viewfinder, but Paw spotted them once again in April while taking pictures of mockingbirds. This time, he watched them land in their nest in a steeple of the First Baptist Church, across from the State Capitol. |
Thus began Paw’s photographic profile of the raptors in the heart of the Old North State. Paw tracked and documented the hawks for nearly five months, heading out before and after work and during his lunch breaks to watch them hunt, fly, and rear the four baby birds of prey in their charge. “I shot at all different times of day: early in the morning, when the sun was low; at lunchtime between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., with high, overcast shadows; and after work, though the sun would still be high at that point because it was summertime,” he says. |
With the more than 3,000 images that he gathered, Paw created two books on Blurb, a publish-on-demand website. Raleigh Raptors describes Paw’s observations from April to June, while Raleigh Raptors Image Archive features an images-only selection from April through August. “The traditional publishing route can be difficult, so going through Blur was the quickest, easiest way,” says Paw. “I wanted people to be able to see this.” |
Paw used the Tamron SP 70-300mm VC lens to capture the hawks’ daily routine — and the Vibration Compensation proved invaluable when he was following the birds and didn’t have time to set up a tripod. “I had the Vibration Compensation on 99.9 percent of the time,” he says. “The VC is simply amazing. I often like to shoot wide open, and it was great for that. Stopped down, it was even sharper.” |
The nest was up about 100 feet, which presented its own unique issues. “Getting birds in focus from a distance using slow shutter speeds and higher ISOs can be challenging,” says Paw. “I started out in Aperture Priority mode, because for the past 30 years, my subjects have been pretty static — with Aperture Priority, I can control the depth-of-field. However, the camera was choosing too slow of a shutter speed when I wasn’t taking stationary shots, so I switched over to Shutter Priority. That, however, would pull the aperture wide open in low-light situations, when I wanted it to be stopped down to f/8.” |
Paw ended up using a “Pseudo-Manual” mode with auto ISO and his aperture set at f/8. This way, he could ensure that he didn’t waste time figuring out the best camera settings and risk missing a great shot. “The shutter speed would depend on what I was shooting,” he says. “For the most part, when the birds were in flight, I’d have the shutter at 1/1250. If they were stationary, I’d try to have it at 1/400 to 1/800. Most of the time, though, there wasn’t time to switch the shutter, so I’d leave it at 1/1250.” |
One of Paw’s main challenges was locking onto the focus while the hawks were in flight. “First, I’d set my camera to AF-C, or continuous autofocus,” he says. “I’d remove the autofocus from the shutter button and instead use the AF button on the back of the camera, simply holding it down as I moved with the bird. The 70-300 did a nice job of tracking the hawks using this method.” |
Paw is hoping the red-tailed raptors will return in 2012. “Hawks are territorial,” he says. “There are hawk sites all over the country — there’s a hawk in Philadelphia that always comes back, as well as Pale Male in Central Park,” he says. “They tend to return to a specific location if they’ve been successful raising their young there. At least one chick usually dies because of food competition, so the fact that these hawks were able to raise four is fairly unusual. I’m definitely hoping they head back to Raleigh so I can photograph them next year!” |
For Paw’s continuing coverage of the hawks, go to http://opienc.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/raleigh-raptors/. |