From the office in the softest voice possible, Sharon said, “Get in here slowly with your longest lens!” I slowly walked into the office to see Sharon pointing cautiously out the window. There on Tree 2 about eight feet in front of Sharon was perched our winter, Sharp-shinned Hawk. We’d seen it many times, mostly perched right out in the open like it was right now. A gorgeous bird, I grabbed the D5 / 800mm which is always set up when I’m home and walked out to the the shot. That’s what you see below, the first shots. I always take a couple of shots in this kind of situation so we have at the very least a visual record of birds that come on the property. But looking through the viewfinder I saw I had two major problems. The obvious one is the background, the not so obvious but bigger problem, snow flare!
The solution to both issues was moving to the left, which I did and shot the Sharpie until he continued on with his hunting. Now how did I see that snow flare? If you look at the two photos, see how in the bottom one there are no “blacks” in the bird? Look then at the background and compare the two, the loss of black is even more evident. Finally, look at the color between the two. The issue with snow flare is it is bounced light, light coming from above and then bouncing off the snow from below. Where you normally expect flare is shooting towards the sun, with snow it can come from any direction. As that bounced light strikes the front element, it causes the least noticed flare which is loss of contrast and color. Now in getting rid of the snow flare, I ended up with a background which might be a tad better but it was the best I could so with the snow flare. The best part is we have a visual record of a cool bird that munches on other of our cool birds!