Early on in my photography I was lucky to have some amazing experiences with a bird that isn’t all that common in our area. Especially not common to get to see and photograph so closely.

We had a peregrine falcon that would regularly show up in a pretty specific spot. Not only would it be there, but it would hang out and stay there for awhile. It was possible to just stand and watch and photograph this bird. It was one of my favorite photographic experiences ever.

This isn’t the best photo technically, but I think it really captures the feeling of these times. Just looking up into the eyes of the falcon. And the falcon looking down into my eyes.

I captured this photo with the first digital SLR camera I owned. I was using the kit lens that came with the camera. It was a 70-300mm lens. Zoomed in to 300mm at f6 with an ISO of 200 and a shutter speed of 1/250 second.