Not long after I got my first DSLR, I was still mostly interested in bugs and flowers. That’s still true, and I don’t really often go looking for birds, but when I stumble across one, I’ll enjoy the moment and try to get some good shots. But in those early days, I hardly ever even looked up.

So after an afternoon of taking shots of bugs and flowers, I was returning to the park’s field house to freshen up before going home, and was rather baffled by the group of half a dozen people or so looking up. I didn’t even look up to see what they were looking at, but asked one of them. “You should take a picture of the hawk,” she said. This was what I got, and now I look up.

October 10, 2010. Cropped from a larger image. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 70–300mm Nikon zoom lens at 300mm (35mm equivalent: 450mm), f/5.6, 1/640, ISO 640.